Saturation of the third-order polarizability of carbon nanotubes characterized by a dipole interaction model

An atomic dipole interaction model has been used for calculating the second hyperpolarizability of carbon nanotubes on a length scale up to 75 nm. It is demonstrated that an atomistic representation of mesoscale systems such as nanotubes can be used to obtain a cubic response property up to a size of the system where the property scales linearly with increasing size. In particular, it demonstrates that atomistic models are useful also for designing nonlinear molecular materials, where local modifications may give large macroscopic contributions. The saturation length has been calculated for carbon nanotubes. It is found that carbon nanotubes are comparable to conjugated polymers with respect to the magnitude of the second hyperpolarizability and are therefore very promising candidates for future nonlinear optical materials.