Abstract A concept of concentration gradient induced by incident radiation which describes the dependence of the Rayleigh ( I ω ) and hyper-Rayleigh ( I 2 ω ) intensities on the power as well as background concentration is proposed. In our previous paper, we have demonstrated the effect of concentration gradient on the first-, second- and third-order polarizabilities and discussed that concentration gradient in the system can be created in a different way. Here we demonstrate the most important origin of the concentration gradient in a system, i.e., the concentration gradient generation by the incident radiation. The formulae developed here can be applied to describe the optical behaviour of solution and gas-phase systems.