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Nonlinear Optical Properties of Materials

Local-field Enhanced Optical Nonlinearities

Joseph W. Haus, Nauzer Kalyaniwalla

Published Jan 1, 1988• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We discuss the enhancement of optical nonlinearities due to local—field effects associated with small particles. This phenomenon is important for the large nonlinear response observed from optical phase conjugation in glass materials impregnated with metal or semiconductor microcrystallites1,2, and from surface-enhanced Raman scattering3 Predictions of optical bistability due to local—field enhancement of nonlinearities have been made in the literature4–7.

DOI
10.1364/nlopm.1988.tue4

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We discuss the enhancement of optical nonlinearities due to local—field effects associated with small particles. This phenomenon is important for the large nonlinear response observed from optical phase conjugation in glass materials impregnated with metal or semiconductor microcrystallites1,2, and from surface-enhanced Raman scattering3 Predictions of optical bistability due to local—field enhancement of nonlinearities have been made in the literature4–7.
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It is well known that dense materials with local-field effects can show "intrinsic" optical bistability when they are directly irradiated by a light beam. This has been shown theoretically in a number of works and also experimentally in several cases, in gas media and also in doped solid-state materials where nonlinearities based on standard local-field effects can be reinforced with other ion interaction effects. Although from the point of view of applications nonlinearities stronger than those found so far would be desirable, the fact that no optical resonator is needed to achieve bistability makes these materials potentially interesting for applications in optical information storage and processing.
In this complement we discuss several examples of optical phenomena in media where the refractive index depends nonlinearly on the intensity , known as optical Kerr media. This nonlinear effect exists in all materials, even isotropic ones, like glass or fused silica, but it is particularly marked in certain physical systems to be exemplified in Section 7B.1. After investigating the propagation of light through such media in Section 7B.2, we shall discuss three applications of the optical Kerr effect (which can be studied in any order). We begin by describing a bistable optical system , when this nonlinear medium is inserted in a Fabry–Perot cavity (Section 7B.3). We then study phase conjugate mirrors and examine their potential applications in adaptive optics (Section 7B.4). Finally, we discuss certain effects occurring during the propagation of an isolated wave, bounded either transversely or temporally, in a Kerr medium, and describe self-focusing effects (Section 7B.5) and self-phase-modulation effects (Section 7B.6). In particular, we shall show that nonlinear effects and dispersion effects can compensate to produce stable structures known as solitons , which maintain their shape during propagation. Examples of third-order nonlinearities Nonlinear response of two-level atoms We begin by studying a simple case of a nonlinear interaction, namely a two-level quantum system under the effects of a plane wave.
We predict nanoscale field and dipole patterns due to the broken uniformity of a laser-driven local field in 1D and 2D lattices. They may result in size-related resonances and large field enhancement, which in turn can give rise to low-intensity nonlinear optical effects, e.g., optical bistability, even in the ultimate case of a pair of coupled atoms. At certain, "magic" numbers and configurations of atoms in a lattice, the system may exhibit the self-induced cancellation of the suppression of a local field.