Phase coherence and extreme self phase modulation

Abstract

I study how pulse to pulse phase coherence in a pulse train can survive super-broadening by extreme self phase modulation (SPM). Such pulse trains have been used in phase self-stabilizing schemes as an alternative to using a feedback process. However, such super-broadened pulses have undergone considerable distortion, and it is far from obvious that they necessarily retain any useful phase information. I propose measures of phase coherence (i.e. supercontinuum coherence) applicable to such pulse trains, and use them to analyze numerical simulations comparable to self-stabilization experiments.