Coexistence of two-photon absorption and saturable absorption in ion-implanted platinum nanoparticles in silica plates

Platinum nanoparticles were nucleated in a high-purity silica matrix by an ion-implantation method. The third-order nonlinear optical response of the samples was studied using femtosecond pulses at 800 nm with the z-scan technique; picosecond pulses at 532 nm using a self-diffraction approach; and nanosecond pulses at 532 nm employing a vectorial two-wave mixing experiment. Nanosecond and picosecond explorations indicated an important thermal process participating in the optical Kerr effect evaluated. However, femtosecond results allowed us to distinguish a purely electronic response, related exclusively to ultrafast refractive and absorptive nonlinearities. Femtosecond experiments pointed out the possibility to switch the dominant physical mechanism responsible for the nonlinear optical absorption in the sample. This opens the potential for controlling quantum mechanisms of optical nonlinearity by femtosecond interactions.