Abstract

Semiconductor-doped glasses have been shown to exhibit large nonlinearities together with reasonably high transmissions near the band gap.^1,2 Unfortunately, the nanosecond duration radiative recombination^1-3 seems to hinder the use of such materials for high-speed nonlinear applications. On the other hand, as the semiconductor concentration in these composite materials is relatively small the high-overall transmission permits strongly saturating absorption of all crystallite with a moderate laser intensity. Therefore, Auger recombination can play an important role at the high-free-carrier concentration achieved in such a case and strongly decrease the radiative lifetime of the material.

© 1987 Optical Society of America