  Broadband-tunable sources of circularly-polarized light are crucial in fields
such as laser science, biomedicine and spectroscopy. Conventional sources rely
on nonlinear wavelength conversion and polarization control using standard
optical components, and are limited by the availability of suitably transparent
crystals and glasses. Although gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber
provides pressure-tunable dispersion, long well-controlled optical
path-lengths, and high Raman conversion efficiency, it is unable to preserve
circular polarization state, typically exhibiting weak linear birefringence.
Here we report a revolutionary approach based on helically-twisted hollow-core
photonic crystal fiber, which displays circular birefringence, thus robustly
maintaining circular polarization state against external perturbations. This
makes it possible to generate pure circularly-polarized Stokes and anti-Stokes
signals by rotational Raman scattering in hydrogen. The polarization state of
the frequency-shifted Raman bands can be continuously varied by tuning the gas
pressure in the vicinity of the gain suppression point. The results pave the
way to a new generation of compact and efficient fiber-based sources of
broadband light with fully-controllable polarization state.

Optics