Modelling of high-power supercontinuum generation in highly nonlinear, dispersion shifted fibers at CW pump

For the first time a remarkably exact match was achieved of the results from modelling of CW-pumped SC in a highly non-linear fibre with experiment (A.K. Abeeluck et al. Opt. Lett. 29, 2163-2165 (2004)) where a wide-band SC in the 1200-1780-nm range was reported. Our simulation results show that decay of CW pump radiation into a train of sub-picosecond pulses induced by the modulation instability leads to formation of optical solitons. Energy and carrier frequency of the solitons are random parameters because of quantum noise in the pump radiation. We found that a relatively smooth SC spectrum obtained by us from modelling and observed experimentally comes from averaging of a large number of soliton spectra and the spectrum of short-wavelength non-soliton radiation that is generated because of resonant pumping of energy from solitons.