Over the last few years, mid-IR sources have gained an enormous interest due to their societal impact as most of the organic and inorganic molecules have their strong fundamental absorption lines in this electromagnetic spectrum. Although, a good amount of research has been carried out for the generation of the tunable mid-IR sources, but currently available laser sources are tunable to only few hundred nanometers. This suggests that a large number of lasers in different wavelength regimes to be needed in order to cover a broad mid-IR region and this become an expensive deal. The objective of this book is to provide a detailed overview of a new technique to build mid-IR sources with tunability of upto 4000 nm in a single fiber-optic system. For this purpose, the optical parametric amplification and supercontinuum generation processes are exploited in the chalcogenide glass based fibers and PCFs for the generation of mid-IR radiation in the CW and pulse regime with added feature of tunability. Since the tunable lasers are quite expensive, therefore, the proposed methodology to achieve broadly tunable mid-IR source may be economically cheaper and relatively better solution.

Dr. Satya Pratap Singh has received his PhD degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India in 2016. His research interest includes lasers and their mode-locking, fiber-optic sensors and nonlinear optical process based OPA/OPO/supercontinuum mid-IR CW and pulsed sources in nonlinear crystals, waveguide and fibers.