Abstract
Metal–dielectric nanocomposites (MDNC)—dielectric crystals, glasses, and liquids, with embedded metal nanoparticles (NPs)—promise important photonic applications. Relevant characteristics of MDNC are their large linear and nonlinear optical properties if a careful selection of host and metal NPs (their nature, shape, density, and spatial arrangement) is made. In this chapter, we present examples of NL spectroscopy of MDNC applying the Z-scan and Kerr shutter techniques. The understanding of the results is based on the classical description of Nonlinear Optics. A nonlinearity management procedure was applied to control the optical response of the MDNC by playing with the volume fraction occupied by metal nanostructures, laser intensity, and wavelength, as well as the morphology of the nanostructures. High-order nonlinearities were measured and exploited to illustrate new phenomena enhanced by the metal NPs.
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