Field-induced birefringence third order

The optical Kerr effect is a phenomenon of the optical field-induced birefringence and refers to the linear birefiingence induced by a linearly polarized optical field. The pump and probe beams are polarized 45 to each other in optical Kerr effect experiments. The probe beam may be composed of two orthogonal linearly polarized beams, and the polarization of one beam is parallel to that of the pump beam. According to third-order optical nonlinearity, the pump beam-induced linear birefringence is given by [46]. 

The first and third order terms in odd powers of the applied electric field are present for all materials. In the second order term, a polarization is induced proportional to the square of the applied electric field, and the. nonlinear second order optical susceptibility must, therefore, vanish in crystals that possess a center of symmetry. In addition to the noncentrosymmetric structure, efficient second harmonic generation requires crystals to possess propagation directions where the crystal birefringence cancels the natural dispersion leading to phase matching. 

On the assumption of total symmetry of the tensor of third-order nonlinear polarizability c(— co coi, cog, cog), its non-zero and independent elements are the same as those of Table 12. Direct theoretical calculations of c = c(0 0,0,0) have been performed for the atoms of inert gases and some simple molecules. Values of the tensor elements = c(— cu cu, 0,0) have been determined for numerous molecules from static Kerr effect studies and values of c = c(— cd ot>,coi — col) from measurements of optical birefringence induced by laser li t. Measurements of second-harmonic generation by gases in the presence of a static electric field yield the tensor elements c " = c( — 2co co, to, 0), which can also be obtained from second-harmonic scattering in centro-symmetric liquids. The elements of the tensor c = c(— 3co co, co, co)... 

Besides various detection mechanisms (e.g. stimulated emission or ionization), there exist moreover numerous possible detection schemes. For example, we may either directly detect the emitted polarization (oc PP, so-called homodyne detection), thus measuring the decay of the electronic coherence via the photon-echo effect, or we may employ a heterodyne detection scheme (oc EP ), thus monitoring the time evolution of the electronic populations In the ground and excited electronic states via resonance Raman and stimulated emission processes. Furthermore, one may use polarization-sensitive detection techniques (transient birefringence and dichroism spectroscopy ), employ frequency-integrated (see, e.g. Ref. 53) or dispersed (see, e.g. Ref. 54) detection of the emission, and use laser fields with definite phase relation. On top of that, there are modern coherent multi-pulse techniques, which combine several of the above mentioned options. For example, phase-locked heterodyne-detected four-pulse photon-echo experiments make it possible to monitor all three time evolutions inherent to the third-order polarization, namely, the electronic coherence decay induced by the pump field, the djmamics of the system occurring after the preparation by the pump, and the electronic coherence decay induced by the probe field. For a theoretical survey of the various spectroscopic detection schemes, see Ref. 10. 

A number of optical effects arise out of both the first and second hyperpolarizibilities. However, only some among them have been systematically studied for practical applications. In this chapter, we will discuss the electric field-induced optical birefringence in second-order NLO materials and the light-induced optical nonlinearities including optical Kerr effect and two-photon absorption (TPA) in third-order NLO materials. Molecular design for... 

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