Femtosecond third-order optical nonlinearity of the GeS2–Ga2S3–CdI2 new chalcohalide glasses

New chalcohalide glasses from the GeS2–Ga2S3–CdI2 glassy system have been prepared using the well-established melt-quenching method and its glass-forming region was given in this paper. According to the comprehensive consideration of thermal properties, the glass with the composition 0.8GeS2–0.1Ga2S3–0.1CdI2 was estimated to be the optimum composition within the studied glassy system. And its nonlinear refractive index n2 of this glassy sample was estimated to be 7.5×10−15 cm2/W according to femtosecond time-resolved optical Kerr gate (OKG) measurement technique. The full width at half-maximum of the third-order correlation signal was 155 fs. Widely transmittance window, good glass-forming ability, higher χ(3) and large electronic ultrafast OKG response make these glasses the potential applications in current photonic field such as ultra-fast all-optical switching devices.