The anisotropic Kerr nonlinear refractive index of the beta-barium borate (β-BaB2O4) nonlinear crystal

Abstract

We study the anisotropic nature of the Kerr nonlinear response in a beta-barium borate (β-BaB2O4, BBO) nonlinear crystal. The focus is on determining the relevant ${\chi }^{(3)}$ cubic tensor components that affect interaction of type I cascaded second-harmonic generation. Various experiments in the literature are analyzed and we correct the data from some of the experiments for contributions from cascading as well as for updated material parameters. We find that the Kerr nonlinear tensor component responsible for self-phase modulation in cascading is considerably larger than what has been used to date. We evaluate the impact of using such a cubic anisotropic response in ultrafast cascading experiments.

Updated version, comments on experiments from the literature welcome

References in corpus (5)

• Nonlocal explanation of stationary and nonstationary regimes in cascaded soliton pulse compression
• Limits to compression with cascaded quadratic soliton compressors
• Generalized Miller Formulae
• Scaling laws for soliton pulse compression by cascaded quadratic nonlinearities
• Higher-order Kerr effect and harmonic cascading in gases