We report the observation of strong third harmonic generation from a macroscopic array of aligned ultralong single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with intense midinfrared radiation. Through power-dependent experiments, we determined the absolute value of the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility, χ(3), of our SWCNT film to be 5.53 × 10−12 esu, three orders of magnitude larger than that of the fused silica reference we used. Taking account of the filling factor of 8.75% for our SWCNT film, we estimate a χ(3) of 6.32 × 10−11 esu for a fully dense film. Furthermore, through polarization-dependent experiments, we extracted all the nonzero elements of the χ(3) tensor, determining the magnitude of the weaker tensor elements to be ∼1/6 of that of the dominant χzzzz(3) component.
@article{arxiv.1301.4825,
title = {Midinfrared Third Harmonic Generation from Macroscopically Aligned Ultralong Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes},
author = {D. T. Morris and C. L. Pint and R. S. Arvidson and A. Luttge and R. H. Hauge and A. A. Belyanin and G. L. Woods and J. Kono},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1301.4825},
year = {2013}
}