150 W Short Wavelength Infrared Supercontinuum Generation in Amplifying 2 μm Noise-Like Pulse

In this letter, high power all-fiber short wavelength infrared supercontinuum (SWIR SC) is demonstrated, which is realized in the amplification process of
$2~\mu \text{m}$
noise-like pulse (NLP). A figure-8 configuration, based on nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM), is set to obtain stable NLP seeds with repetition frequency of 6.31 MHz, pulse widths of 5.21 ns and maximum output power of 162.1 mW. Dual-stage Tm-doped fiber amplifiers (TDFAs) are introduced in the system to achieve efficient power amplification and spectrum broadening. The influences of pre-amplifier power on main output SC characteristics have also been studied, and results demonstrate that high pre-amplifier power leads to high SC output power and broad spectra with power slope efficiency decreasing. A maximum output power of 150 W is obtained with 34.34 % slope efficiency at last, which is the highest SWIR SC power amplified by NLP, to the best of our knowledge. The corresponding SC spectrum with 20 dB spectral bandwidth of 437 nm spans from ~1966 nm to ~2403 nm. Our research demonstrates that NLP-based SWIR SC has advantages of relatively simple structure and high output power.