Phase, timing, and amplitude noise on supercontinua generated in microstructure fiber.

During supercontinuum formation in nonlinear fiber the presence of a noise seed on the input laser pulse can lead to significant excess noise on the generated output supercontinuum electric field. We relate pulse-averaged moments of this electric-field noise to the measured RF spectrum of the frequency comb formed by the supercontinuum. We present quantitative numerical results for the intrinsic phase and amplitude noise on the frequency comb resulting from input shot noise, including the scaling of the noise with different experimental parameters. This intrinsic noise provides a fundamental lower limit to the phase stability of frequency combs that originate from microstructure fiber.