Two-beam coupling by a hot electron nonlinearity

Published

January 15, 2021

Author(s)

Jagannath Paul, Mario Miscuglio, Yaliang Gui, Volker Sorger, Jared Wahlstrand

Abstract

Transparent conductive oxides such as indium tin oxide (ITO) have attracted much recent interest for their enhanced optical nonlinearity near the epsilon near zero wavelength. The nonlinearity of these materials is caused by laser heating of electrons, with a subpicosecond relaxation time due to cooling to the lattice. We consider two beam interaction in a material with a hot electron nonlinearity. A nonlinear transient grating modifies the effective nonlinearity experienced by one pulse from the other. Theoretical results are compared to polarization- and chirp-dependent pump- probe experiments on an ITO film. Two-beam coupling can enhance and modify the nonlinearity in a slightly nondegenerate pump-probe scheme, which could impact applications such as all-optical modulation. Our results apply to the interpretation of pump-probe experiments on any material with a hot electron nonlinearity.

Citation

Optics Letters

Volume

46

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OL.413649

Local Download

Keywords

nonlinear optics, pump-probe, ultrafast optics

Citation

Paul, J. , Miscuglio, M. , Gui, Y. , Sorger, V. and Wahlstrand, J. (2021), Two-beam coupling by a hot electron nonlinearity, Optics Letters, [online], https://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OL.413649, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=930240 (Accessed October 13, 2025)