An all-fiber supercontinuum (SC) optical source utilizes a combination of a seed pulse supply of short-duration optical pulses with a highly non-linear optical medium in the form of two or more concatenated sections of highly non-linear optical fiber (HNLF) of different dispersion values and lengths. The two or more sections of HNLF are configured to include at least one section that exhibits a positive dispersion value and one section that exhibits a negative dispersion value. Non-linear effects such as self-phase modulation (SPM), cross-phase modulation (XPM), Raman amplification, and the like, cause the seed pulses to broaden as they propagate through each section of HNLF, where the differences between the dispersion values, as well as the lengths of each fiber section, are particularly configured to create an SC output that is wide and smooth, exhibiting a stable intensity and high coherence level.
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