Optical limiting behaviour of suspensions of single-walled carbon nanotubes in water, ethanol and ethylene glycol is reported. Experiments with 532 nm, 15 nsec duration laser pulses show that optical limiting occurs mainly due to nonlinear scattering. The observed host liquid dependence of optical limiting in different suspensions suggests that the scattering originates from microbubbles formed due to absorption-induced heating.

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Results of experimental and theoretical investigation of optical limiting for 30 ns pulses at 527 nm in C60 are presented which suggest that apart from higher excited state absorption, other nonlinear processes may have an important role in the experimentally observed limiting action.

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We demonstrate the trapping of cold 87 Rb atoms in a toroidal geometry using a rf-dressed quadrupole magnetic trap formed by superposing a strong radio frequency (rf) field on a quadrupole trap. This rf-dressed quadrupole trap has minimum of the potential away from the quadrupole trap centre on a circular path which facilitates the trapping in the toroidal geometry. In the experiments, the laser cooled atoms were first trapped in the quadrupole trap, then cooled evaporatively using a weak rf-field, and finally trapped in the rf-dressed quadrupole trap. The radius of the toroid could be varied by varying the frequency of the dressing rf-field. It has also been demonstrated that a single rf source and an antenna can be used for the rf-evaporative cooling as well as for rf-dressing of atoms. The atoms trapped in the toroidal trap may have applications in realization of an atom gyroscope as well as in studying the quantum gases in low dimensions.