Intracavity ultra-broad supercontinuum generation from a figure-9 Yb-doped fiber laser

Intracavity supercontinuum generation based on self-Q-switch assisted by stimulated Brillouin scattering is experimentally demonstrated from an all-fiber Ytterbium laser in the form of figure-9 configuration. At 3 W of pump power, a supercontinuum (SC) extending from visible red light to beyond two microns is obtained. Such spectrum has a flatness better than 5 dB in the 1256–2141 nm range and spans more than an octave ∼ 856–2141 nm at − 20 dB level excluding the main peak. The proposed SC laser source comes in a compact, simple, and low-cost design which could find application in areas such as spectroscopy, microscopy, and biomedical imaging.