Study of third‐order optical nonlinearities of substituted hydrazones in PMMA

We investigated the third‐order nonlinear optical properties of donor–acceptor substituted hydrazones doped into PMMA matrix using single beam Z‐scan technique at 532 nm. The magnitude of third‐order susceptibility, χ(3) is of the order of 10−13esu. The nonlinear refractive index, n2 and the molecular second order hyperpolarisability, γh are of the order of 10−11esu and 10−32esu, respectively. The compounds exhibit larger third‐order NLO properties in PMMA host when compared to the pure compounds. The study reveals that these hydrazones are a good candidate of nonlinear optical materials for photonic applications.