The Newport Supercontinuum kit is a complete solution from Newport and Spectra-Physics designed specifically for the generation of supercontinuum with a femtosecond Ti:Sapphire laser such as the Tsunami® or MaiTai® ultrafast oscillators. This kit is intended to assist and educate the researcher in the part selection and design of a supercontinuum experiment setup in their laboratory and is the direct result of numerous interactions and requests for support from researchers getting into the new field of supercontinuum generation.
The Newport Supercontinuum kit leverages the powerful combination of Newport’s SCG-800 Supercontinuum Fiber Module and high stability ULTRAlign™ manual positioners. The SCG-800 Supercontinuum Fiber Module is a polarization-maintaining supercontinuum device for use with 800nm range femtosecond lasers. It contains a highly nonlinear, polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber with a zero dispersion wavelength of 750 nm. The fiber ends are sealed and mounted in quartz ferrules, and the polarization axis are aligned to a line on the device. The nonlinear fiber is mounted in a robust aluminum housing, which is then securely mounted onto the ULTRAlign™ translation stage. The SCG-800 features build-in beam expansion at the end facets, facilitating easy coupling and a high damage threshold. The kit also includes a faraday isolator, two steering mirrors, and a half waveplate and polarizer combination for variable
attenuation of the incident pump laser power. Considerable thought was put into the design of this kit to eliminate issues such as optical feedback to the laser and to maximize the stability of the laser beam in order to stay aligned to the small 1.6 micron fiber core inside the SCG-800 module.
All of the optics and mounts in this kit have been certified by our Ph.D. scientists in the Newport Technology and Applications Center to work together and to be compatible with the Spectra-Physics Tsunami® or MaiTai® Ti:Sapphire lasers. This kit allows the user to assemble the pre-selected and certified off the shelf components and put them together for a cost effective supercontinuum solution.
A much more detailed explanation of this kit, alignment procedures, recommended operating parameters and a detailed characterization of the supercontinuum generated as a function of launched pump power and wavelength can be found in Newport Application Note 28, Supercontinuum Generation in SCG-800 Photonic Crystal Fiber.
SCG-800 Supercontinuum Generation Module
Please see Application Note 28
