Abstract

Measurement of the ultrafast optical nonlinearity of liquids is of interest for both understanding the involved physical processes and for practical applications. By using the recently proposed Z-scan technique, which relies on the beam deformation resulting from the nonlinear interaction between the beam and the material,¹ one can easily measure the amplitude and the sign of the nonlinear refractive index of the material. Combining this technique with different pulse durations and its time-resolved version with different polarization configurations, one is able to identify clearly different physical processes that contribute to the observed optical nonlinearity.

© 1993 Optical Society of America