title: Femtosecond third-order optical nonlinearity of an azobenzene-containing ionic liquid crystalline polymer.
abstract: The nonlinear optical properties of an azobenzene-containing ionic liquid crystalline polymer were investigated using single beam Z-scan and optical Kerr effect (OKE) techniques. The nonlinear refractive index of electronic origin (3.1×10(-19) m(2)/W) and the nonlinear absorption coefficient (3.63×10(-13) m/W) were determined with 800 nm femtosecond laser pulses at a repetition rate of 1 KHz. The corresponding one-photon and two-photon figures of merit are determined to be 6.05 and 0.94, respectively, at irradiance of 50 GW/cm(2). The response time of the observed nonlinearities is estimated to be as fast as 300 fs. These experiment results demonstrate that the polymer is a promising candidate for applications in all-optical switching modulators and nonlinear photonic devices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Fuli
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Changshun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Jinwen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zeng
mesh_terms: D000042:Absorption; D001391:Azo Compounds / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D052578:Ionic Liquids / Q000737:chemistry*; D017785:Photons; D011108:Polymers; D012031:Refractometry / Q000379:methods; D012542:Scattering, Radiation
chemical_list: D001391:Azo Compounds; D052578:Ionic Liquids; D011108:Polymers; C422409:liquid crystal polymer; C009850:azobenzene