Elimination of the coherent effect in the optical Kerr measurement of bismuth glass using supercontinuum

Abstract

A strong coherent effect was observed in the monochromatic optical Kerr effect (OKE) experiment of a Bi2O3-B2O 3-SiO2 oxide glass (BI glass). To eliminate the influence of the coherent effect, we proposed a simple femtosecond two-color OKE measurement method with wavelength tunability using a supercontinuum. In the two-color OKE measurement the third order nonlinear susceptibility of the BI glass was measured to be 1.64 × 10-13 electrostatic units (esu), in which the influence of the coherent effect was eliminated. The result is smaller than that obtained in a previous monochromatic OKE experiment. In addition, we discuss the discrepancies between the result obtained in this paper and those reported in other studies. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.