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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Saturable refraction and reverse saturable refraction in optical materials

Chunfei Li, Yuxiao Wang

Published Oct 13, 1998• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The intensity-dependent nonlinear refraction in a non- resonant five-level molecular systems is studied in detail using rate equations, including saturable refraction, reverse saturable refraction, and the transition between these two effects.
DOI
10.1117/12.326825

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In earlier chapters we have considered in detail the susceptibility formalism of nonlinear optics, which is perhaps the most familiar approach and has a wide range of application. Starting from the constitutive relations of Chapter 2, the susceptibility formalism is quite general. In many practical applications, a particular phenomenon can be described accurately by a single order of nonlinearity, and the susceptibility then provides a useful and convenient description. However, this is not always the case. Some of the most interesting phenomena in nonlinear optics involve close resonance with the transition frequencies of the medium, and perhaps also the use of very intense optical fields. As remarked in §4.5, in these circumstances the resonant susceptibilities display mathematical divergences which are clearly unphysical. Strictly, these divergences occur only because higher-order nonlinearities have been neglected. Successive orders of nonlinearity take into account such effects as saturation, power broadening and level shifts (optical Stark effect). For intense fields or very close resonance, the contributions from several orders of nonlinearity may be comparable in magnitude. Therefore, despite its generality, the susceptibility formalism does not necessarily provide the most practical approach for the description of resonant processes. This chapter is concerned with the problem of deriving alternative and more manageable descriptions of resonant nonlinear processes, illustrated by examples. For much of the chapter, the nonlinear medium is treated as a two-level system (described in §6.2).