Birefringence-controlled anti-Stokes line emission from a microstructurefiber

Abstract

Microstructure fibers with a specially designed form birefringence are shown to be ideally suited for the creation of highly efficient frequency-tunable sources of short pulses in the visible range. We use unamplified 35-fs pulses of 820-nm Ti: sapphire laser radiation to demonstrate efficient generation of an intense anti-Stokes signal in an elliptical-core fused silica microstructure fiber. The central wavelength of this anti-Stokes signal can be switched between 490 and 510 nm by coupling the pump pulses into the fast and slow modes of the microstructure fiber.