Thermally induced nonlinear optical response and optical power limiting of acid blue 40 dye

•Third-order nonlinear susceptibility obtained for acid blue 40 dye is as large as 10−6 esu.•At low concentrations, both saturable and reverse saturable absorption behaviour prevails.•Dyes exhibit multiple self-diffraction ring patterns due to refractive index change and thermal lensing.

We report the investigations of thermally induced third-order nonlinear optical and optical limiting characterizations for various concentrations of acid blue 40 dye in N,N-Dimethyl Formamide, studied by employing z-scan technique under cw He–Ne laser irradiation at 633 nm wavelength. The samples exhibited nonlinear absorption and nonlinear refraction under the experimental conditions. For lower concentration, the samples display both saturable absorption (SA) and reverse saturable absorption (RSA); whereas with increase in concentration, RSA behaviour prevails. The estimated values of the effective coefficients of nonlinear absorption βeff, nonlinear refraction n2 and third-order nonlinear susceptibility χ(3) were found to be of the order of 10−2 cm/W, 10−4 esu and 10−6 esu respectively. Multiple diffraction rings were observed when the samples were exposed to laser beam due to refractive index change and thermal lensing. The effect of concentration and the laser intensity on the self-diffraction ring patterns was studied experimentally. The acid blue 40 dye also exhibited strong optical limiting properties under cw excitation and reverse saturable absorption is found to be the dominant nonlinear optical process leading to the observed nonlinear behaviour.