Single Experimental Setup for High Sensitive Absorption Coefficient and Optical Nonlinearities Measurements

Accurate knowledge of absorption coefficient of a sample is a prerequisite for measuring the third order optical nonlinearity of materials, which can be a serious limitation for unknown samples. We introduce a method, which measures both the absorption coefficient and the third order optical nonlinearity of materials with high sensitivity in a single experimental arrangement. We use a dual-beam pump-probe experiment and conventional single-beam z-scan under different conditions to achieve this goal. We also demonstrate a counterintuitive coupling of the non-interacting probe-beam with the pump-beam in pump-probe z-scan experiment.