Z-SCAN MEASUREMENTS OF OPTICAL NONLINEARITIES OF DYE-DOPED LIQUID CRYSTALS

Abstract

Nematic liquid crystal (NLC) is a material that features a large nonlinear optical response. The nonlinearity can be enhanced by doping a dye agent into a NLC host. In this paper, we review the nonlinear phenomena recently observed for dye-doped liquid crystal (DDLC) films measured using the Z-scan technique, which is a simple, yet powerful method for measuring nonlinear refractive indices (optical Kerr constant) n2 and nonlinear absorption coefficients β. The nonlinear effects of liquid crystals (LCs) include the electronic polarization effect, electrostriction effect, thermal effect and reorientation effect. When LCs are doped with dye agents, the dye-induced orientational effect, photoisomerization effect, and light-induced thermal effect come about to enhance LC nonlinearity. The dominant effect depends strongly upon the spatial, temporal and polarization properties of the excitation laser beam. Generally speaking, the nonlinear effects resulted from the electronic polarization and photoisomerization effects arise from a laser pulse on picosecond duration scale, while electrostriction, thermal and reorientation effects occur on nanosecond ~ microsecond, nanosecond ~ millisecond and millisecond ~ second duration scales, respectively. In this paper, the causation of nonlinear refractive index n2 into various different experimental conditions is summarized, including the changes of the external electric field, external optical field, polarization of pump beam, temperature and the use of deuterated materials. The mechanisms, which influence the nonlinear effect in dye-doped liquid crystal films, are also discussed.