Femtosecond Kerr index of cyclic olefin co/polymers for THz nonlinear optics

The second-order nonlinear refractive index n2 (Kerr index) of cyclic olefin copolymer (TOPAS) and cyclic olefin polymers (ZEONEX, ZEONOR) was determined at the wavelength of 800 nm within this work. Bulk samples of ZEONEX, ZEONOR and TOPAS were measured using the single-beam Z-scan technique and the values of their nonlinear refractive index were determined to be approximately 2 × 10−20 m2W−1 for all cases. The obtained values of n2 play a vital role for ultrafast pulse evolution and corresponding phenomena such as nonlinear spectral transformation.