Power/energy limiter using reverse saturable absorption

Abstract

In materials with an excited-state absorption cross section larger than the ground-state absorption cross section, increasing the incident light intensity (thus populating the excited state) increases the absorption. We show that such a reverse saturable absorber can function as a power limiter and pulse smoother for long pulses and as an energy limiter and pulse shortener for short pulses. The necessary properties for such a material are described. Reverse saturable absorption is demonstrated at 488 nm in alexandrite. A simple model describing these effects is presented.

Synthesis and high ranked NLT properties of new sulfonamide-substituted indium phthalocyanines

“…Since ns pulses are used, the above considerations confirm that, similar to other indium phthalocyanine-and naphthalocyanine-based systems [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. RSA of Pcs 7-9 is produced by one-photon absorption from the optically pumped excited triplet state T 1 in a process of sequential multiphoton absorption [51][52][53][54][55].…”

Reverse saturable absorption of short polarized light pulses

“…In the limit of neglecting propagation effects and taking infinitesimal pulse widths this formulation reduces to that in Ref. 10. Application of the present formulation to gain media and to saturable absorbers is clearly also of interest, but is not considered here.…”

Nonlinear optical responses of MoS4Cu4(PzMe3)6Cl2 under low power CW He-Ne laser excitation

“…Materials showing RSA become more opaque as the incident optical intensity is increased, because of enhanced absorption from the excited state or a multiphoton absorption process or both [17]. Such materials can be used for the protection of eyes and sensitive devices from intense radiation, apart from their usages in passive mode locking, and optical pulse shaping and processing [3,15,[18][19][20]. On the other hand, a large number of spatial effects can be observed when an violent light beam interacts with a nonlinear medium.…”