Pulse shaping-assisted nonlinear spectral broadening

In this work, we combine the nonlinear element (a highly nonlinear fibre HNLF) with a programmable phase and amplitude filter, which we use as a pulse shaper. This architecture allows power-efficient and flexible sculpturing of the output spectrum, which is no longer tied directly to the characteristics of the pulse source used at the input. The pulse shaping function is obtained by application of the inverse split-step Fourier method (ISSFM), which uses the desired output spectrum and the HNLF characteristics as its input parameters.