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Quantum and Semiclassical Optics Journal of the European Optical Society Part B

Existence of a bistable polarization state in a Kerr medium in the presence of two-photon absorption

M Lefkir, Xuan Nguyen Phu, Genevieve Rivoire

Published Feb 1, 1998• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An elliptically polarized beam is sent into a cell filled with nitrobenzol. The output polarization shows two stable states for a single set of input parameters when the excitation is above the two-photon absorption threshold. Transverse field effects combined with third-order nonlinear parameter changes at high intensities can be used to explain the observations.

DOI
10.1088/1355-5111/10/1/031

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An elliptically polarized beam is sent into a cell filled with nitrobenzol. The output polarization shows two stable states for a single set of input parameters when the excitation is above the two-photon absorption threshold. Transverse field effects combined with third-order nonlinear parameter changes at high intensities can be used to explain the observations.
The steady-state polarizations of fields counterpropagating in nonlinear Kerr media can exhibit complicated behavior.1 We examine the temporal behavior for the case of an isotropic nonlinear Kerr medium and show that the polarizations are temporally unstable above a certain threshold intensity, even when the input polarizations are linear and parallel to each other. This polarization configuration is known to be spatially stable and is often chosen for the two strong pump waves in phase conjugation by degenerate four-wave mixing. We find that the threshold intensity for the polarization instability is approximately the intensity at which the phase conjugate reflectivity is equal to unity. Depending on the ratio of the two input intensities, this instability just above threshold can manifest itself as an abrupt rotation of the output polarizations to a new steady-state value or as a periodic oscillation of the output polarizations. At higher intensities the polarization can evolve chaotically in time, and depending on the ratio of the transit time through the medium to the response time of the medium the output intensity can fluctuate chaotically as well.
Instabilities in the interaction of counterpropagating laser beams in a nonlinear medium can have important consequences for nonlinear optical processes such as optical bistability and phase conjugation. We have performed a theoretical study of the polarization characteristics of two counterpropagating waves in an isotropic Kerr medium in order to determine the stability of the multivalued solutions found by previous workers.1 Our method involves numerical integration of the coupled-amplitude equations describing the spatial and temporal evolution of the counterpropagating vector waves.2 Our results show that the multiply stable solutions for the output polarizations of the two vector fields show hysteresis, and that the order in which the two fields are turned on determines which solution is reached. For even higher input intensities we find that the output polarizations fluctuate in time.
Transmission characteristics of a nonlinear Fabry-Perot interferometer with two independent optical beams are considered under steady-state conditions. The sum frequency of two beams is taken to be near a two-photon resonance of the nonlinear medium. Two beams are coupled through the intensity-dependent susceptibility and influence propagation of each other in a mutual way. A set of two coupled-state equations is derived and it incorporates saturated absorption and dispersion as well as the effect of optical Stark shift. The system is found to have as many as seven stationary states, and at most, three are stable among them. The degenerate case of a single beam in two-photon resonance with the medium is also considered with particular emphasis on the effect of the optical Stark shift on optical bistability.