Solid-core tellurite glass fiber for infrared and nonlinear applications.

By optimizing glass composition and using a multistage dehydration process, a ternary 80TeO(2)-10ZnO-10Na(2)O glass is obtained that shows excellent transparency in the wavelength range from 0.38 microm up to 6.10 microm. Based on this optimized composition, we report on the fabrication of a single-mode solid-core tellurite glass fiber with large mode area of 103 microm(2) and low loss of 0.24-0.7 dB/m at 1550 nm. By using the continuous-wave self-phase modulation method, the non-resonant nonlinear refractive index n(2) and the effective nonlinear parameter gamma of this made tellurite glass fiber were estimated to be 3.8x10(-19) m(2)/W and 10.6 W(-1) x km(-1) at 1550 nm, respectively.