Glass formation and the third harmonic generation of Cu2Se–GeSe2–As2Se3 glasses

We have performed the investigation of the nonlinear optical properties namely the third harmonic generation (THG) of the glass-formation region in the Cu2Se–GeSe2–As2Se3 system. The samples were synthesized by direct single-temperature method from high-purity elementary substances. We have found that the value of disorder parameter Δ depends on the composition of the glassy alloys. The measurements show that increasing the Cu2Se concentration leads to increased slope of the absorption edge, which may be explained by the decrease of the height of random potential relief for the electrons in the tails of the state density which border the band edges. A very sharp increase in the THG at low temperature was observed. Significant enhancement in THG was obtained with decreasing the energy gap, which agreed well with the nonlinear optical susceptibilities obtained from other glasses.