We have synthesized a series of chalcogenide glasses from the As-S-Se system that is designed to have strong nonlinearities. Measurements reveal that many of these glasses offer optical Kerr nonlinearities greater than 400 times that of fused silica at 1.25 and 1.55mum and figures of merit for all-optical switching greater than 5 at 1.55mum .

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Chalcogenide-glass fibers based on sulfide, selenide, telluride and their rare-earth-doped compositions are being actively pursued worldwide. Great strides have been made in reducing optical losses using improved chemical purification techniques, but further improvements are needed in both purification and fiberization technology to attain the theoretical optical losses. Despite this, chalcogenide-glass fibers are enabling numerous applications that include laser power delivery, chemical sensing, and imaging, scanning near field microscopy/spectroscopy, IR sources/lasers, amplifiers and optical switches.

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 χ(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.