Nonlinear optical semiconductor nanocrystals and their photonic applications

Abstract

Nonlinear optical materials with large third-order nonlinear susceptibilities and appropriate response time have attracted great interests recently because of their potential applications of optical computing, ultrafast switching, optical power limiting, and group velocity manipulation. Among nonlinear optical materials, semiconductor nanocrystals, metal nanoparticles, and organic materials have been intensively studied since their nonlinear optical properties may be tuned by varying their sizes and surface/interface environments. Recently, we investigated the third-order nonlinear optical properties of semiconductor nanocrystals both theoretically and experimentally. The possible physical limitation of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility of typical semiconductor nanocrystal as well as the ways to optimize its nonlinearity has been studied. Experimental measurements have been compared with theoretical calculations on linear and nonlinear optical properties of cadmium chalcogenide semiconductor nanocrystals for the photonic applications of optical switching, optical power limiting, and group velocity manipulation.