Recent advances in very highly nonlinear chalcogenide photonic crystal fibers and their applications

Chalcogenide glasses are based on a mixture of chalcogen elements (Sulphur, Selenium and Tellurium) and other elements such as Arsenic, Germanium, Antimony or Gallium. Compared to silica glasses, they offer several distinctive optical properties such as their transmission window which extends far into the infrared spectral region (up to 25μm for telluride glasses). Chalcogenide glasses also exhibit an extremely high nonlinear index coefficient n2 that can be two or three orders of magnitude greater than in silica at 1.55 μm. These nonlinear properties can be further enhanced by drawing these glasses into Chalcogenide Photonic Crystal Fibers (CPCF) due to the possibility of designing such fibers with a very small core diameter [1–3]. Since 2004, PERFOS and the laboratory "Glass and Ceramics" of Rennes University (EVC) have worked together to develop CPCFs [4–6] and are currently investigating a new method to fabricate chalcogenides preforms based on the glass casting process.