Application of Nonlinear Light Scattering in Nanocarbon Suspensions for Adjustment of Laser Pulse Duration

It is shown that the scanning an optical cell containing the aqueous suspension of multiwalled carbon nanotubes with the focused laser beam along the optical axis leads to an increase of the nonlinear scattering. This is accompanied by a smooth change of the nanosecond laser pulse duration transmitted through the suspension. A pulse shortening occurs as the cell approaching the beam waist due to cutting off the trailing part of the incident laser pulse. Thus the full width at half maximum of the transmitted laser pulse through suspension decreases with the increase of the incident laser power density. In experiments the incident YAG: Nd 3+ -laser passive Q-switched pulses of 16 ns duration have been smoothly adjusted in the range of 16–10 ns.