Abstract

PTS has been reported to have a very large non-resonant nonlinearity by a number of groups, making it a prime candidate for applications in nonlinear optics.[1-6] At 1064 nm there have been a number of measurements published for both the nonlinear refractive index coefficient n₂ and the two photon absorption coefficient β₂.[2-6] Although the published two photon coefficients agree with each other to within a factor of two, the values for n₂ vary over more than one order of magnitude. As a result the two photon figure of merit, T, which is used to assess the effectiveness of a material for nonlinear optics varies from 0.3 to 22. This parameter needs to be less than unity and hence it is not clear whether this material will be useful or not. In this paper we report on detailed z-scan measurements of the nonlinearity in single crystal PTS at 1064 nm.

© 1993 Optical Society of America