{"doi":"10.1109/3.53394","title":"Sensitive measurement of optical nonlinearities using a single beam","abstract":"A sensitive single-beam technique for measuring both the nonlinear refractive index and nonlinear absorption coefficient for a wide variety of materials is reported. The authors describe the experimental details and present a comprehensive theoretical analysis including cases where nonlinear refraction is accompanied by nonlinear absorption. In these experiments, the transmittance of a sample is measured through a finite aperture in the far field as the sample is moved along the propagation path (z) of a focused Gaussian beam. The sign and magnitude of the nonlinear refraction are easily deduced from such a transmittance curve (Z-scan). Employing this technique, a sensitivity of better than lambda /300 wavefront distortion is achieved in n/sub 2/ measurements of BaF/sub 2/ using picosecond frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser pulses.< <ETX xmlns:mml=\"http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML\" xmlns:xlink=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink\">&gt;</ETX>","journal":"IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics","year":1990,"id":10954,"datarank":25.409779274975442,"base_score":9.09504174761272,"endowment":9.09504174761272,"self_citation_contribution":1.3642562621419083,"citation_network_contribution":24.045523012833534,"self_endowment_contribution":1.3642562621419083,"citer_contribution":24.045523012833534,"corpus_percentile":97.5,"corpus_rank":1078,"citation_count":8910,"citer_count":189,"citers_with_citation_signal":189,"citers_with_endowment":189,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"1990-04-01","authors":[{"id":89192,"name":"A.A. Said","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89193,"name":"T.-H. Wei","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89194,"name":"D.J. Hagan","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89195,"name":"E.W. Van Stryland","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89196,"name":"Mansoor Sheik‐Bahae","orcid":"0000-0001-5703-3653","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89197,"name":"A. A. Said","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89198,"name":"Tai‐Huei Wei","orcid":"0000-0002-1909-3409","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89199,"name":"David J. Hagan","orcid":"0000-0003-2713-1767","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89200,"name":"Eric W. Van Stryland","orcid":"0000-0001-6200-8700","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":89191,"name":"M. Sheik-Bahae","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":24,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}