Investigations of the β-response in organic molecules from dipolar to octupolar systems

In this paper we report the first experimental values for the hyperpolarisability of the octopolar molecules tricyanobenzene and trinitrobenzene. The experimental hyperpolarisabilities were obtained using the Hyper-Rayleigh Scattering technique. It is experimentally shown that octopolar molecules have nonlinear optical properties which compare favorably to those of their dipolar counterparts. All the experimental results were in excellent agreement with the results from quantum-chemical calculations.