Electronic molecular nonlinear optical susceptibility

The n-electron excitations are viewed as occuring on molecular sites weakly coupled to their neigbors and providing sources of nonlinear optical response through the on-site microscopic second order nonlinear electronic susceptibility... 

Azo-benzene molecules are widely recognized as attractive candidates for many nonlinear optical applications. A highly deformable distribution of the ic-electron gives rise to very lar molecular optical nonlinearitics, Phdto-isomerization of azo molecules allows linear and nonlinear macroscopic susceptibilities to be easily modified, giving an opportunity to optically control the nonlinear susceptibilities. In this chapter, we will discuss third-order nonlinear optical effects related to photoisornerization of azo-dye polymer optical materials. 

For these classes of conjugated molecular and polymer structures, the principal property is that their nonreson-ant, nonlinear optical responses are dominated by ultrafast, virtual excitations of the ir-electron states. This was directly demonstrated by MNA (2-methyl-4-nitroaniline) single crystal measurements of macroscopic second order susceptibilities at do (j 3) and optical frequencies (13-1 ) and combined second harmonic measurements and theo-... 

The interest in semiconductor QD s as NLO materials has resulted from the recent theoretical predictions of strong optical nonlinearities for materials having three dimensional quantum confinement (QC) of electrons (e) and holes (h) (2,29,20). QC whether in one, two or three dimensions increases the stability of the exciton compared to the bulk semiconductor and as a result, the exciton resonances remain well resolved at room temperature. The physics framework in which the optical nonlinearities of QD s are couched involves the third order term of the electrical susceptibility (called X )) for semiconductor nanocrystallites (these particles will be referred to as nanocrystallites because of the perfect uniformity in size and shape that distinguishes them from other clusters where these characteriestics may vary, but these crystallites are definitely of molecular size and character and a cluster description is the most appropriate) exhibiting QC in all three dimensions. (Second order nonlinearites are not considered here since they are generally small in the systems under consideration.)... 

The fastest optical nonlinearity originates from the electronic response. To lowest order, )f = pP)/eo and = py)leQ, where P and /are molecular hyperpolarizabilities. As in the case of nonlinear susceptibilities, hyperpolarizabilities describe a variety of processes. Optical harmonic generation will be considered separately. 

The 2PA nonlinear absorption process can be deseribed from the semi-classical theory, which leads to express the nonlinear electric polarisation P of an optical medium and the electronic dipole moment p induced at molecular scale following Equations 5.6 and 5.7, respectively, as a function of odd-order susceptibilities and hyperpolarisabilities, respectively [39] ... 

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