All Soft Glass Fiber Components and Sources

The fabrication of fiber lasers that emit in mid-infrared wavelengths (
$2-20\ \upmu \mathrm{m}$
) require fiber-based building blocks compatible with this spectral range. Such fiber components include the optical fiber itself that must be transparent to the mid-infrared, also power combiners/dividers, wavelength division multiplexers/demultiplexers, polarization-dependent couplers, gain media, etc. This presentation highlights the recent progresses of the Nonlinear Photonics Group at McGill University, with an emphasis on all-fiber components that have been built from chalcogenide and fluoride fibers. These glasses have been specifically chosen for their optical properties such as transparency in the mid-infrared, high nonlinearity, and tolerance to high optical intensities. From those glasses, components and sources such as the first single mode optical fiber couplers (power dividers, wavelength-dependent, polarization dependent) as well as all soft-glass fiber sources (optical parametric oscillator, Brillouin laser) have become accessible and will be presented.