Flattening the curve: Nano-film enhanced supercontinuum edition

Providing light with tailored properties through ultrafast supercontinuum generation represents an active field of nonlinear science research. A German-Australian research collaboration has presented a new concept that includes a longitudinally varying thickness nano-films in microstructured exposed core fibers. This offers low input energy, broadband and spectrally flattened spectra in the near infrared with high pulse-to-pulse stability, establishing a novel class of light sources for fields such as biophotonics, medical diagnostics, environmental sciences, or metrology.