I would like to consult a nice reference that explains the theoretical background of SC generation in optical fibers in detail but more or less self-contained. I would also like to have your opinions on nonlinear optic books that present material at introductory level.
1 Answer
Ancient question, but here goes...
Supercontinuum generation is a very large field, so no one source will provide a complete explanation but here are a couple of pointers to start with.
There is a very good review of supercontinuum generation pumped in the anomalous dispersion regime here.
Here's an article on SCG pumped in the normal dispersion regime which demonstrates optical wave breaking as a broadband source of coherent radiation.
You will find lots of excellent references both in the bibliographies of those two articles and by checking their citing articles, so I won't list any more here. Also, once you have found a few papers that you like, check their department or university library websites for theses written by the corresponding author, because these usually have a lot of good introductory material.
The standard text book for nonlinear fibre optics is by Agrawal.
'Nonlinear Optics' by Robert Boyd and 'Quantum Nonlinear Optics' by Amnon Yariv are also excellent sources for general nonlinear optics info. If I remember rightly then neither address supercontinuum generation directly, but the highly relevant Kerr nonlinearity is detailed extensively in both.