In a paper published in Appl. Phys. Lett., we report the first measurements of optothermal nonlinearity of silica aerogels.
Silica based aerogels are ultra porous materials with refractive index close to unity. Their extreme porosity is responsible for very low thermal conductivity, which in turn leads to very peculiar optothermal properties.
In this paper, in collaboration with researchers at the University Sapienza and CNR, we measured the optothermal nonlinear coefficient of silica based aerogels in the visible range.
The full article can be found here.