Abstract
Liquid crystals have one of the largest intensity-dependent refractive indices due to both thermal effects (absorption) and molecular reorientation.1 When coated onto a thin film waveguide, they provide a very convenient nonlinear cladding medium which has already been used to demonstrate the existence of nonlinear guided waves2 and all-optical switching3 with different liquid crystal materials. In the experiment reported here we deliberately chose a liquid crystal material (K18) with a nematic-to-isotropic phase transition temperature just above room temperature and have observed bistability in guided-wave transmission.
© 1986 Optical Society of America
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