Nonlinear Properties of Chalcogenide Glass Fibers

We demonstrate that the chalcogenide glasses possess large nonlinearities that can enable compact Raman amplifiers as well as fiber lasers and amplifiers in the mid-IR. These high nonlinearities also allow efficient supercontinuum generation, which is useful for broadband sources in the near and mid-IR. These materials can also be poled to induce an effective chi((2)), opening up the potential of waveguide parametric amplifiers and sources. The Brillouin gain coefficients are relatively large and enable the demonstration of slow light in small core fibers. Results lead to a figure of merit that is about 140 times larger, or a theoretical gain about 45 times larger, than the best silica-based fiber configurations reported to date.