Thermal optical nonlinearity enhanced by gold nanoparticles

We report on the observation of a large thermal nonlinearity of an organic material enhanced by the presence of gold nanoparticles. The studied system consisted of a colloid of castor oil and gold particles with average diameter of 10 nm, with filling factor of 4.0x10-5. Z-scan measurements were performed for an excitation wavelength tuned at 810 nm in the CW regime. It was observed that this colloidal system presents a large thermal nonlinear refractive index, which was equal to -7.4x10-8 cm2/W. This value is about 41 times larger than the n2 of the host material. The thermo-optic coefficient of the colloid was also evaluated, and a large enhancement was observed in its value owing to the presence of the gold nanoparticles in the organic material.

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