Theoretical and experimental comparative study of nonlinear properties of imidazolium cation based ionic liquids

Abstract

This work describes the experimental and theoretical study of the nonlinear optical properties of the imidazolium cation based ionic liquids and the corresponding thermo-optical parameters. Experimental results of nonlinear optical properties, such as nonlinear refractive index and thermo-optical properties are determined by Z-scan and EZ-scan techniques with a femtosecond laser source. Theoretical simulations of linear and nonlinear optical properties performed by density functional theory (DFT) are discussed, in terms of polarizability, the first and second-order of hyperpolarizability. A correlation between the theoretical and experimental results is presented, where the variation of the signals of each ionic liquid can be compared with their nonlinear optical properties.