Abstract

Since the demonstration of degenerate four-wave mixing in 'sharp-cut' filter glasses by Jain and Lind [1], considerable effort has been expended to understand the linear and nonlinear optical properties of glasses containing small amounts of Cd(Se,S) microcrystallites. This class of materials is promising for all-optical photonic switching devices: good optical quality samples are available, waveguide structures can be made using conventional ion-exchange techniques, the location of the absorption edge can be varied by composition changes across a wide range of wavelengths, and photo-recovery times on the order of ~ 10 ps have been reported [2,3]. Additional scientific interest in these materials comes from the observation of optical effects due to three-dimensional quantum confinement of photo-generated carriers [4] in specially treated samples.

© 1987 Optical Society of America