Nonlinear absorption and optical limiting in gold-precipitated glasses induced by a feratosecond laser

Nonlinear absorptions of Au nanoparticles precipitated silicate glasses by irradiation of a focused femtosecond pulsed laser were investigated using Z-scan technique with 8 ns pulses at 532 nm. Optical limiting (OL) effects in such glasses have been also measured. It is observed that the behaviors of transition from saturable absorption to reverse saturable absorption and the OL performances for different samples are significantly different, which depend drastically on the irradiation power density of the femtosecond laser used for the An nanoparticles precipitation in the glass. Strong nonlinear absorptions in these samples are mainly attributed to the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and free carrier absorptions of the precipitated Au nanoparticles. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.