Electronic origin, nonlinear optical

In summary, we have briefly reviewed current research highlights from studies of second order nonlinear optical responses in organic and polymeric media. We have stressed how fundamental studies have led to microscopic understanding of important electronic states that comprise the origin of the large second order nonlinear responses in these... 

However, its was found possible to infer all four microscopic tensor coefficients from macroscopic crystalline values and this impossibility could be related to the molecular unit anisotropy. It can be shown that the molecular unit anisotropy imposes structural relations between coefficients of macroscopic nonlinearities, in addition to the usual relations resulting from crystal symmetry. Such additional relations appear for crystal point group 2,ra and 3. For the monoclinic point group 2, this relation has been tested in the case of MAP crystals, and excellent agreement has been found, triten taking into account crystal structure data (24), and nonlinear optical measurements on single crystal (19). This approach has been extended to the electrooptic tensor (4) and should lead to similar relations, trtten the electrooptic effect is primarily of electronic origin. 

We have shown the molecular orbital theory origin of structure - function relationships for electronic hyperpolarizability. Yet, much of the common language of nonlinear optics is phrased in terms of anharmonic oscillators. How are the molecular orbital and oscillator models reconciled with one another The potential energy function of a spring maps the distortion energy as a function of its displacement. A connection can indeed be drawn between the molecular orbitals of a molecule and its corresponding effective oscillator . 

ELECTRONIC ORIGIN OF SECOND ORDER NONLINEAR OPTICAL RESPONSES IN CONJUGATED LINEAR CHAIN STRUCTURES AND HIGHLY CHARGE CORRELATED tt-ELECTRON STATES... 

So, optimizing the nonlinearity of a material begins at the molecular structural level, which requires a detailed understanding of the origin of an induced nonlinear polarization and its relationship to the molecular electronic structure. For this reason, much attention has been paid to the theoretical calculations of the nonlinear optical response by ab initio and semi-empirical methods, providing the chemist with the information that indicates which synthetic strategy should be followed [16-24],... 

The nonlinear optical properties of rotaxanes and catenanes were studied mainly by three techniques the optical second and third harmonic generation and the electro-optic Kerr effect. As already mentioned, the harmonic generation techniques give the fast, electronic in origin, molecular and bulk hyperpolarizabili-ties, whereas the electro-optic methods are sensitive to all effects which induce optical birefringence, such as e.g. the rotation of molecules. Therefore the last technique is very useful to study the rotational mobility of molecules and/or their parts. 

The variation in absorption due to the electric field modulation (Equation 19.16) is a nonlinear optical effect. We now consider the origin of nonlinear behavior in materials. In a classical description [89-91], the electric field interacts with the charges (q) in an atom through the force (qF). which displaces the centre of the electron density away from the nucleus. This results in charge separation and thus in a field-induced dipole pi. For an assembly of atoms, the average summation over all atoms ultimately gives rise to the bulk polarization P vector of the material. P opposes the externally applied field and is given by ... 

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