Numerical Exploration of Supercontinuum Generation in Zinc-Germanium Diphosphide-Based Photonic Crystal Fiber

This work presents a fiber designed by solid-core hexagonal photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with Zinc-Germanium Diphosphide (ZnGeP2). The aim of this study is to generate an efficient mid-infrared supercontinuum (SC). Here, we have numerically investigated all the optical properties of the fiber by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD). To achieve this goal, a structure has been obtained by optimizing the fiber properties by selecting unequal air hole diameters in the six layers. The design proposed here has non-uniformity in the diameter of the air holes, thereby optimizing important features such as flat dispersion, effective mode area, and low attenuation for efficient spectral broadening. The PCF provides an anomalous dispersion profile with a maximum power of 3 kW for the pump pulse at 3.5 μm by which a spectral range from 1 to 15 μm has been achieved. The obtained results have significant applications in high-speed nonlinear imaging, optical communication, and frequency measurement.