Abstract

Bound-electronic nonlinearities in the transparency region of optical solids are important in applications such as nonlinear propagation in fibers, ultrafast optical switching, and optical limiting. We recently showed that the dispersion and band-gap scaling of the bound-electronic Kerr effect can be obtained from a nonlinear Kramers-Kronig transformation once the nondegenerate nonlinear absorption spectrum is known.¹ By using this approach and accounting for the effects of the ac-Stark effect, the electronic-Raman effect, and two-photon absorption on the nonlinear absorption, an expression for n₂(ω) was obtained that gave excellent agreement with experimental results on semiconductors as well as large-gap dielectrics.²

© 1991 Optical Society of America