High power mid-infrared supercontiuum light sources based on fluorotellurite glass fibers (invited)

High power all-fiber mid-infrared(MIR) supercontinuum(SC) light sources have attracted much attention for their wide applications in fundamental research, environments, medicine, and national defense security. Currently, such SC light sources are mainly based on fluoride glass fibers. While the relative low damage threshold and poor chemical durability of the fluoride glass fibers influenced their applications in practical high power MIR SC light sources. For further improving the performances of the MIR SC light sources and developing practical high power MIR SC light source, a fluorotellurite glass(TeO2-BaF2-Y2O3, TBY) with good thermal and chemical stabilities was developed, and fluorotellurite glass fibers was fabricated based on it. By using the fluorotellurite glass fibers as the nonlinear media, coherent SC generation from 1.4-4 m and broadband SC generation from 0.4-5.14 m were obtained in our experiments. Moreover, SC light source with an average power of 10 W was also obtained, and the spectral range covered 947-3 934 nm.