Ultrafast optical Kerr gate of bismuth-plumbum oxide glass for time-gated ballistic imaging

We demonstrated the time-gated ballistic imaging technique using a femtosecond optical Kerr gate (OKG) of bismuth-plumbum oxide glass, the nonlinear optical properties of which were also investigated. The third-order nonlinear refractive-index n2 of the bismuth-plumbum oxide glass was measured to be 2.19 × 10^-15 cm²/W, and the nonlinear response time was estimated to be shorter than 180 fs. For the time-gated ballistic imaging, the maximum measurable optical density of turbid media using the OKG of bismuth-plumbum oxide glass was 9.3, while only 7.0 for the OKG of quartz glass. And the intensities of the images for the bismuth-plumbum oxide glass were approximately two orders of magnitude higher than that for the quartz glass. The experimental results indicated that the bismuth-plumbum oxide glass was an excellent optical material for nonlinear optical applications.