SENSITIVITY OF THE TOTAL BEAM PROFILE DISTORTION Z-SCAN FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF NONLINEAR REFRACTION

A comparison of the sensitivity of the recently proposed total beam pr ofile distortion Z-scan to the well-known Z-scan and Eclipsing Z-scan techniques is presented. Experimental sensitivities are measured in th e picosecond pulsed regime for studying Kerr nonlinearity in CS2 and i n the cw-regime for studying thermal nonlinear refraction in an ethano l solution of malachite green. It is shown that the sensitivity of the new method is enhanced by more than one order of magnitude with respe ct to the usual Z-scan and more than five times with respect to the Ec lipsing Z-scan.