Laser beam propagation through bulk nonlinear media: Numerical simulation and experiment

This dissertation describes our efforts in modeling the propagation of high intensity laser pulses through optical systems consisting of one or multiple nonlinear elements. These nonlinear elements can be up to 103 times thicker than the depth of focus of the laser beam, so that the beam size changes drastically within the medium. The set of computer codes developed are organized in a software package (NLO_BPM). The ultrafast nonlinearities of the bound-electronic n₂ and two-photon absorption as well as time dependent excited-state, free-carrier and thermal nonlinearities are included in the codes for modeling propagation of picosecond to nanosecond pulses and pulse trains. Various cylindrically symmetric spatial distributions of the input beam are modeled. We use the cylindrical symmetry typical of laser outputs to reduce the CPU and memory requirements making modeling a real-time task on PC's.; The hydrodynamic equations describing the rarefaction of the medium due to heating and electrostriction are solved in the transient regime to determine refractive index changes on a nanosecond time scale. This effect can be simplified in some cases by an approximation that assumes an instantaneous expansion. We also find that the index change obtained from the photo-acoustic equation overshoots its steady-state value once the ratio between the pulse width and the acoustic transit time is greater than unity.; We numerically study the sensitivity of the closed-aperture Z-scan experiment to nonlinear refraction for various input beam profiles. If the beam has a ring structure with a minimum (or zero) on axis in the far field, the sensitivity of Z-scan measurements can be increased by up to one order of magnitude.; The linear propagation module integrated with the nonlinear beam propagation codes allows the simulation of typical experiments such as Z-scan and optical limiting experiments. We have used these codes to model the performance of optical limiters. We study two of the most promising limiter designs: the monolithic self-protective semiconductor limiter (MONOPOL) and a multi-cell tandem limiter based on a liquid solution of reverse saturable absorbing organic dye. The numerical outputs show good agreement with experimental results up to input energies where nonlinear scattering becomes significant.