Chromatic dispersion measurement of microstructured optical fibers for nonlinear applications

Microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) play an important role in the field of nonlinear optics. Due to their great design flexibility it is possible to fabricate both single mode MOFs with a very large mode area to suppress nonlinear effects and fibers with very small, strongly confining cores to enhance the nonlinear interaction. For supercontinuum generation, the knowledge of the chromatic dispersion of the fiber modes and the zero dispersion wavelengths is crucial because pumping at these wavelengths prevents spectral broadening of the pump pulse. We present a frequency domain group velocity dispersion (GVD) measurement setup based on a white light Mach-Zehnder interferometer. A supercontinuum light source is used to ensure that enough power is transmitted even through fibers with very small cores over a wide spectral range. We show GVD measurements of Lanthanum doped specialty MOFs with enhanced nonlinear coefficient and compare them with finite element method (FEM) simulations.