International audienceHigh second-order susceptibilities are created by thermal poling in bulk germanium disulfide based chalcogenide glasses. Experimental conditions of the poling treatment (temperature, voltage, time) were optimized for each glass composition. The second-order nonlinear signals were recorded by using the Maker fringes experiment and a second-order coefficient χ(2) up to 8 pm V-1 was measured in the Ge25Sb10S65 glass. This value is obtained using a simulation based on accurate knowledge of the thickness of the nonlinear layer. Two mechanisms are proposed to explain the creation of a nonlinear layer under the anode: the formation and the migration of charged defects towards the anode may mainly occur in Ge20Ga5Sb10S65 and Ge25Ga5S70 glasses, whereas the migration of Na+ ions towards the cathode may be responsible for the accumulation of negative charges under the anode in Ge33S67 and Ge25Sb10S65 glasses. Different electronic conductivity behaviors seem to be at the origin of the phenomenon. In parallel, the potential effect of the poling treatment on the structural and electronic properties is studied using Raman spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectroscopy measurements

The fabrication and characterization of an all-solid photonic bandgap fiber is reported. The fiber presents a low-loss region (< 20 dB/km) around 1550 nm and can be used as single-mode even for a fiber core diameter as large as 20 microm. The fiber presents a zero dispersion at the short wavelength edge of the bandgap. The measured polarisation mode dispersion is wavelength dependent but remains small (few ps/km1/2). This fiber opens the possibility to realize low-loss large mode area bandgap fiber with a doped core and or Bragg gratings.

The dynamics of the second-order nonlinearity induced in a thermally poled Infrasil silica glass is experimentally and theoretically studied. 200 mum and 500 mum-thick samples have been poled for different durations varying from 1 minute to 100 minutes. After the poling process, the magnitude and the spatial distribution of the induced chi((2)) susceptibility have been characterized accurately with the "layer peeling" method. A two-charge carrier model with an electric field dependant charge injection is used to explain the experimental time-evolution of the chi((2)) profiles. A good agreement between experimental results and simulations is reported.

A Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to design photonic crystal fiber structures with user-defined chromatic dispersion properties. This GA is combined with a full vectorial finite element method in order to determine the effective index of propagation of the modes and then, the chromatic dispersion of structures generated by GA. This method proves to be a powerful tool for solving this inverse problem.