Frequency upconverted emissions centered at 526 and 547 nm from two thermodynamically coupled excited states of ${\mathrm{Er}}^{\text{3+}}$ doped in ${\mathrm{BaTiO}}_3$ nanocrystals were recorded in the temperature range from 322 to 466 K using a diode laser emitting at 980 nm as the excitation source. The ensemble measurements of the fluorescence intensity ratio (FIR) of the signals at 526 and 547 nm as a function of the temperature showed that the sensitivity (the rate in which the FIR changes with the temperature) of such sensor depends on the size of the nanocrystal. This is explained taking into consideration modifications of nonraditive relaxation mechanisms with the size of the nanocrystals.

We investigate the effects of two-dimensional confinement on the lasing properties of a classical random laser system operating in the incoherent feedback (diffusive) regime. A suspension of 250 nm rutile (${\mathrm{TiO}}_2$) particles in a rhodamine 6G solution was inserted into the hollow core of a photonic crystal fiber generating the first random fiber laser and a novel quasi-one-dimensional random laser geometry. A comparison with similar systems in bulk format shows that the random fiber laser presents an efficiency that is at least 2 orders of magnitude higher.

The excitation of near-infrared (2+1)D solitons in liquid carbon disulfide is demonstrated due to the simultaneous contribution of the third- and fifth-order susceptibilities. Solitons propagating free from diffraction for more than 10 Rayleigh lengths although damped, were observed to support the proposed soliton behavior. Numerical calculations using a nonlinear Schr\"odinger-type equation were also performed.

Various techniques to characterize the nonlinear (NL) optical response of centro-symmetric materials are presented and evaluated with emphasis on the relationship between the macroscopic measurable quantities and the microscopic properties of photonic materials. NL refraction and NL absorption of the materials are the phenomena of major interest. The dependence of the NL refraction and NL absorption coefficients on the nature of the materials was studied as well as on the laser excitation characteristics of wavelength, intensity, spatial profile, pulse duration and pulses repetition rate. Selected experimental results are discussed and illustrated. The various techniques currently available were compared and their relative advantages and drawbacks were evaluated. Critical comparisons among established techniques provided elements to evaluate their accuracies and sensitivities with respect to novel methods that present improvements with respect to the conventional techniques.

We report an alternative random laser (RL) architecture based on a flexible and ZnO-enriched cellulose acetate (CA) fiber matrix prepared by electrospinning. The electrospun fibers, mechanically reinforced by polyethylene oxide and impregnated with zinc oxide powder, were applied as an adsorbent surface to incorporate plasmonic centers (silver nanoprisms). The resulting structures – prepared in the absence (CA-ZnO) and in the presence of silver nanoparticles (CA-ZnO-Ag) - were developed to support light excitation, guiding and scattering prototypes of a RL. Both materials were excited by a pulsed (5 Hz, 5 ns) source at 355 nm and their fluorescence emission monitored at 387 nm. The results suggest that the addition of silver nanoprisms to the ZnO- enriched fiber matrix allows large improvement of the RL performance due to the plasmon resonance of the silver nanoprisms, with ~80% reduction in threshold energy. Besides the intensity and spectral analysis, the RL characterization included its spectral and intensity angular dependences. Bending the flexible RL did not affect the spectral characteristics of the device. No degradation was observed in the random laser emission for more than 10,000 shots of the pump laser.