Abstract

We experimentally probed the nonlinear optical response of aqueous nano-colloidal suspensions to provide a test of the theoretical approaches that have been proposed for the nonlinearity, namely an exponential model, an artificial Kerr medium, and a non-ideal gas model. The best agreement with experiment is found using the non-ideal gas model for the colloidal suspension which in turn can be used to infer values for the second virial coefficient of the medium and the nonlinear coefficients.

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History
Original Manuscript: April 6, 2009
Manuscript Accepted: May 29, 2009
Revised Manuscript: May 28, 2009
Published: June 4, 2009

References

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Author Affiliations

R. El-Ganainy, D. N. Christodoulides

College of Optics & Photonics-CREOL, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, 32816

W. M. Lee

SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9SS, United Kingdom

K. Dholakia, E. M. Wright

SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9SS, United KingdomCollege of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ85721

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