Nonlinear optical properties of certain colored, free-flowing, dye-based fountain pen inks

Ajay A R¹, Beryl C² and Reji Philip^2
1Department of Physics, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri- 690 525, India
²Light and Matter Physics Group, Raman Research Institute, Sadashivanagar, Bangalore 560 080, India

The paper is dedicated to Prof D V G L N Rao

In this work, we investigate the nonlinear optical absorption behaviour of a set of thirteen dye-based fountain pen inks, employing the open-aperture Z-scan technique. 532 nm, 5 ns laser pulses obtained from a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser are used for exciting the samples. The inks show reverse saturable absorption (RSA) of varying strengths at high laser fluences, which arises primarily from excited state absorption (ESA). The nonlinear absorption coefficient for each ink is determined by numerically fitting the measured data to the nonlinear propagation equation. Because of strong RSA the inks exhibit an excellent optical limiting property. These inks can have potential applications in the design and fabrication of optical limiter devices for the protection of human eyes and sensitive optical detectors from hazardous laser beams. © Anita Publications. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Z-scan, dye-based ink, Reverse saturable absorption, Optical limiting, Pulsed laser.

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