Amorphous silicon nanowires combining high nonlinearity, FOM and optical stability

We demonstrate optically stable amorphous silicon nanowires with both high nonlinear figure of merit (FOM) of similar to 5 and high nonlinearity Re(gamma) = 1200W(-1)m(-1). We observe no degradation in these parameters over the entire course of our experiments including systematic study under operation at 2 W coupled peak power (i.e. similar to 2GW/cm(2)) over timescales of at least an hour. (C)2012 Optical Society of America