Generation of extremely high-angle Bessel beams.

We present a setup to generate tightly focused Bessel beams that is composed of a half-ball lens coupled with a relay lens. The system is simple and compact compared to conventional imaging of axicons based on microscope objectives. We experimentally demonstrate the generation of a Bessel beam with a 42° cone angle at 980 nm in air with a typical beam length of 500µ and a central core radius of about 550 nm.

Noise in supercontinuum generated using PM and non-PM tellurite glass all-normal dispersion fibers.

Intensity fluctuations in supercontinuum generation are studied in polarization-maintaining (PM) and non-PM all-normal dispersion tellurite photonic crystal fibers. Dispersive Fourier transformation is used to resolve the shot-to-shot spectra generated using 225-fs pump pulses at 1.55 m, with experimental results well reproduced by vector and scalar numerical simulations.

High Aspect Ratio Structuring of Glass with Ultrafast Bessel Beams.

Controlling the formation of high aspect ratio void channels inside glass is important for applications like the high-speed dicing of glass. Here, we investigate void formation using ultrafast Bessel beams in the single shot illumination regime. We characterize the morphology of the damages as a function of pulse energy, pulse duration, and position of the beam inside fused silica, Corning Eagle XG, and Corning Gorilla glass.

Intracavity incoherent supercontinuum dynamics and rogue waves in a broadband dissipative soliton laser.

Understanding dynamical complexity is one of the most important challenges in science. Significant progress has recently been made in optics through the study of dissipative soliton laser systems, where dynamics are governed by a complex balance between nonlinearity, dispersion, and energy exchange. A particularly complex regime of such systems is associated with noise-like pulse multiscale instabilities, where sub-picosecond pulses with random characteristics evolve chaotically underneath a much longer envelope.

Instabilities in a dissipative soliton-similariton laser using a scalar iterative map.

Numerical simulations of a dissipative soliton-similariton laser are shown to reproduce a range of instabilities seen in recent experiments. The model uses a scalar nonlinear Schrödinger equation map, and regions of stability and instability are readily identified as a function of gain and saturable absorber parameters. Studying evolution over multiple round trips reveals spectral instabilities linked with soliton molecule internal motion, soliton explosions, chaos, and intermittence.