Abstract: | Although electronics technologies have made great advances in device speed, optical devices can function in the time domain
inaccessible to electronics. In the time domain less than 1 ps, optical devices have no competition. Photonic or optical devices
are designed to switch and process light signals without converting them to electronic form. The major advantages that these
devices offer are speed and preservation of bandwidth. The switching is accomplished through changes in refractive index of
the material that are proportional to the light intensity. The third-order optical susceptibility, χ(3), known as the optical Kerr susceptibility which is related to the non-linear part of the total refractive index, is the nonlinearity
which provides this particular feature. Future opportunities in photonic switching and information processing will depend
critically on the development of improved photonic materials with enhanced Kerr susceptibilities, as these materials are still
in a relatively early stage of development. Different glass systems are now under investigation to increase their nonlinearity
by introducing a variety of modifiers into the glass-network. Ion implantation is an attractive method for inducing colloid
formation at a high local concentration unattainable by the melt-glass fabrication process and for confining the non-linearities
to specific patterned regions in a variety of host matrices. Recent works on metal-ion implanted colloid generation in bulk
fused silica glasses have shown that these nanocluster-glass composites under favourable circumstances have significant enhancement
of χ(3) with picosecond to femtosecond temporal responses. |