Soliton delivery of mid-IR femtosecond pulses with ZBLAN fiber

Abstract

We demonstrate environmentally protected delivery of highpower femtosecond mid-IR pulses in a single-mode ZBLAN fiber by soliton formation. A 70-fs Cr:ZnS laser at 2.4 µm reaches this regime already at ~2 nJ launched pulse energy, while a 110-fs pulse can be transmitted without visible shortening over meters of fiber. We also measured the nonlinearoptical coefficient of ZBLAN as n2 = 2.7 ± 0.2 × 10−16 cm2 /W at 2.4 µm wavelength.