Femtosecond Laser Processing as an Advantageous 3-D Technology for the Fabrication of Highly Nonlinear Chip-Scale Photonic Devices

The properties of highly nonlinear glasses for photonic devices and the advantages of processing these materials using femtosecond laser pulses are discussed in a brief review. A novel approach is proposed for the optimization of the modification process that takes into account the dispersion of the nonlinear coefficients of refraction and absorption. Numerical modeling of the pulse energy deposition into a sample of chalcogenide glass shows that the shapes and dimensions of the modified regions depend on the nonlinear coefficients.