Supercontinuum generation in the vacuum ultraviolet through dispersive-wave and soliton-plasma interaction in a noble-gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

Abstract

We report on the generation of a three-octave-wide supercontinuum extending from the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) to the near infrared, spanning at least 113--1000 nm (i.e., $11\ensuremath{-}1.2\mathrm{eV}$ ), in He-filled hollow-core kagome-style photonic crystal fiber. Numerical simulations confirm that the main mechanism is an interaction between dispersive-wave emission and plasma-induced blue-shifted soliton recompression around the fiber zero dispersion frequency. The VUV part of the supercontinuum, the modeling of which proves to be coherent and possesses a simple phase structure, has sufficient bandwidth to support single-cycle pulses of 500 asec duration. We also demonstrate, in the same system, the generation of narrower-band VUV pulses through dispersive-wave emission, tunable from 120 to 200 nm with efficiencies exceeding $1%$ and VUV pulse energies in excess of 50 nJ.