Measurement of white-light supercontinuum beam properties from a photonic crystal fibre using a laser scanning confocal microscope

We report a new non-destructive method for high-resolution measurement and analysis of white-light supercontinuum source emission properties. We investigate propagation behaviour at multiple wavelengths simultaneously using confocal laser scanning microscopy. This will include an overview of the experimental geometry used and analysis methods employed for the measurement of the M2 value at different spectral regions and an accurate beam waist of the white-light supercontinuum-based source. With this configuration, we observed that the white-light supercontinuum output of the PCF possessed M 2 values close to the absolute limit of unity across the visible spectrum, thus confirming diffraction-limited performance.