Low- and high-order nonlinear optical studies of ZnO nanocrystals, nanoparticles, and nanorods

Variable shapes and sizes of the zinc oxide nanostructures attract the attention due to the peculiarities of their nonlinear optical properties. We report the second-, third-, and high-order nonlinear optical studies of ZnO nanostructures using 800 nm, 40 fs pulses. We analyze the second harmonic generation as a function of the energy of the 800 nm laser pulses irradiating ZnO nanostructures. The studied samples possess the quadratic dependence of the second harmonic yield at the variable intensity of laser radiation. The Z-scan studies of ZnO nanoparticles suspension using 400 nm probe pulses allow determining their nonlinear refractive index (4 × 10−11  cm2  W−1 ) and nonlinear absorption coefficient (8 × 10−7  cm W−1 ). We also analyze the optical limiting properties of ZnO nanoparticles suspension. The propagation of femtosecond pulses through the plasmas containing ZnO nanoparticles allowed generation of high harmonics up to the 29th order.