Widely tunable femtosecond solitonic radiation in photonic crystal fiber cladding

We report on a means to generate tunable ultrashort optical pulses. We demonstrate that dispersive waves generated by solitons within the small-core features of a photonic crystal fiber cladding can be used to obtain femtosecond pulses tunable over an octave-wide spectral range. The generation process is highly efficient and occurs at the relatively low laser powers available from a simple Ti:sapphire laser oscillator.

The described phenomenon is general and will play an important role in other systems where solitons are known to exist.