One-photon resonant optical nonlinearity of soluble substituted group IV metallophthalocyanines

Abstract

The synthesis and nonlinear optical characterization of highly soluble Ni-, Pd- and Pt-phthalocyanines is reported. When excited resonantly within the Q-band, the third-order nonlinearity is dominated by saturable absorption, observed using the z-scan technique. The imaginary part of the nonlinear susceptibility was observed at 665 nm. From a three-level model, ground-state recovery times in the picosecond regime were determined for all phthalocyanines studied. These fast recovery times were supported by time-resolved measurements using degenerate four-wave mixing in the phase-conjugate geometry.