Nonlinear optical susceptibilities of high-index glasses

We report results of degenerate four-wave mixing measurements of nonresonant nonlinearities in a variety of high-index lead and bismuth containing oxide glasses and the chalcogenide As2S3. The third-order nonlinear susceptibilities of the oxide glasses are found to scale with the heavy metal content. A lead-bismuth-gallate glass was identified with a nonresonant χ3 equal to 42±7×10−14 esu, which is approximately three times larger than that of any glass previously reported.