Optical nonlinearities in semiconductor-doped glasses near and below the band edge

Abstract

We present a brief review of our recent experimental results on optical nonlinearities in semiconductor-doped glasses. It is shown that even below the absorption edge the nonlinearities are determined by nonlinear absorption. The optical Kerr effect is found to have a susceptibility which is comparable to that for nonlinear refraction. We also find that in degenerate four-wave mixing the observed intensity dependence can be strongly influenced by nonlinear absorption.