Observation of an Octave-Spanning Supercontinuum in the Mid-Infrared using Ultrafast Cascaded Nonlinearities

An octave-spanning mid-IR supercontinuum is observed experimentally using ultrafast cascaded nonlinearities in an LiInS 2 quadratic nonlinear crystal pumped with 70 fs energetic mid-IR pulses and cut for strongly phase-mismatched second-harmonic generation.