Theoretical studies on nonlinear optical properties of formaldehyde oligomers by ab initio and density functional theory methods.

The first and second hyperpolarizability beta and gamma are obtained for formaldehyde oligomers (H2CO)n (n = 1-7) using computational methods. We have used the finite field (FF) approach and hyperpolarizability density analysis (HDA) to predict the microscopic first and second nonlinear hyperpolarizability of the formaldehyde oligomers. The spatial contributions of electrons to the hyperpolarizability by using plots of HDA are presented. It has been found from the numerical stability checking of the hyperpolarizability calculations that the calculated values by FF method are more stable than those by HDA approach. The values of beta are zero when n is even as the molecule possesses centrosymmetry, and when n is odd, the differences among beta values are not clear. The gamma values are increased with increase in n.