Dispersive wave generation by solitons in microstructured optical fibers

We study the nonlinear propagation of femtosecond pulses in the
anomalous dispersion region of microstructured fibers, where soliton fission
mechanisms play an important role. The experiment shows that the output
spectrum contains, besides the infrared supercontinuum, a narrow-band 430-
nm peak, carrying about one fourth of the input energy. By combining
simulation and experiments, we explore the generation mechanism of the
visible peak and describe its properties. The simulation demonstrates that
the blue peak is generated only when the input pulse is so strongly
compressed that the short-wavelength tail of the spectrum includes the
wavelength predicted for the dispersive wave. In agreement with simulation,
intensity-autocorrelation measurements show that the duration of the blue
pulse is in the picosecond time range, and that, by increasing the input
intensity, satellite pulses of lower intensity are generated.