Investigation of the third-order nonlinear optical properties in porphyrin solutions in the picosecond regime

The D4σ-Z-scan technique is used to evaluate the sign and the magnitude of the nonlinear (NL) refractive index and the NL absorption (NLA) coefficient with a laser delivering single pulses in the picosecond regime at 355 nm, 532 nm and 1064 nm. The NL optical response of the zinc porphyrins (Pph) has been found to be significantly enhanced. The study of the NLA and refraction is performed, taking into account the time dependence and the spectral width of the incident laser. The variations of the NL coefficients as a function of the intensity and the concentration are provided and are found to be linear