Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in chalcogenide photonic crystal fibers: a brief review

Owing to the advantages of a wide transparency window (over 20 μm), a high optical nonlinearity (up to a thousand times greater than that of silica fibers), and strong confinement and dispersion engineering achievable, chalcogenide photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) are the best candidates for mid-infrared (mid-IR) supercontinuum generation (SCG). In this review, we introduce the background and the basic theory of the SCG firstly before describing several kinds of fabrication methods of the chalcogenide PCFs. Then, recent progress in the chalcogenide PCFs based mid-IR SCG are present.