Ethanol-infiltrated circular photonic crystal fiber for low peak power supercontinuum generation from near-infrared to mid-infrared region

We report computational modeling of a silica based Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) infiltrated with ethanol for NIR to MIR supercontinuum generation. Full vectorial finite element method (FEM) has been used to analyse the impact of infiltration. A flat-top dispersion profile has been obtained with a low peak power of 0.55 kW at a pump wavelength of 1.55 μm. A dispersion value of + 30.231ps/nm/km is obtained in the anomalous region. For the proposed structure nonlinear coefficient is as high as 281.4 W^− 1km^− 1 with effective mode area of 4.16 µm² at 1.55 μm. A broadband supercontinuum spanning, from 1.25 μm to 3.0 μm is achieved by using a fiber length of 20 cm with 60 fs secant laser pulse source. The suggested PCF design assure several critical applications such as biomedical diagnostics, explosives detection, enhanced gas sensing capabilities and improvised food quality monitoring systems.