Optothermal nonlinearity of silica aerogel

We report on the characterization of silica aerogel thermal optical nonlinearity, obtained by z-scan technique. The results show that typical silica aerogels have nonlinear optical coefficient similar to that of glass (\simeq 10^{-12} m^2/W), with negligible optical nonlinear absorption. The non\-li\-near coefficient can be increased to values in the range... Show more