Nonlinear optical properties of Au-Ag nanoplanets made by ion beam processing of bimetallic nanoclusters in silica

The nonlinear absorption of Au-Ag nanoplanets made by Ar irradiation of bimetallic nanoclusters in silica has been experimentally investigated by means of the single beam z-scan technique. The measurements have been performed in the picoseconds regime in order to isolate the fast electronic contribution to the third-order nonlinearity. The results reveal large nonlinear absorption properties of these systems, characterized by the concomitance of saturable and reverse saturable absorption. A phenomenological expression has been developed to fit the z-scan curves and to quantitatively determine the nonlinear optical parameters.