Over three-octave spanning supercontinuum generated in a fluoride fiber pumped by Er & Er:Yb-doped and Tm-doped fiber amplifiers

We demonstrate broadband 0.9-3.6 µm supercontinuum (SC) generation with 0.66 W of output power, using a single-mode fluoride (ZBLAN) fiber pumped by 1.55 µm nanosecond pulses amplified in a cascade of fiber amplifiers. Expanding the pump source by adding an additional amplification section based on thulium-doped fibers, the long-wavelength edge of the spectrum was shifted to ~4 µm and was limited by intrinsic losses of the used nonlinear fiber. For this cases, the average SC power as high as 288 mW was recorded, of which 266 mW (92%), 167 mW (58%) and 60 mW (21%) corresponds to wavelengths longer than 2 μm, 3 μm and 3.6 μm. The performance of the SC sources is described.