Abstract

There is currently great interest in the development of new nonlinear optical materials with enhanced performance in terms of the magnitude of the nonlinear susceptibility. One strategy for developing such new materials is to form a composite material out of two or more constituents, with the goal of producing a composite whose optical properties are superior to those of any of its constituents. Examples of composite materials based on such an approach are metal colloids^[1] and semiconductor microcrystallites in glass^[1], which have recently been the subject of extensive investigation. Very large values of the nonlinear susceptibility are possible through such an approach; for example, Ricard et al^[1] report that the phase conjugate reflectivity measured using silver and gold colloids is enhanced by several orders of magnitude when their laser wavelength is selected to excite the surface plasmon resonance of the metal particle, and that the nonlinear susceptibility of the system can be comparable to that of carbon disulfide even though the concentration of the metallic component, which in this case is the dominant nonlinear component, is only of the order of 10⁻⁶.

© 1992 IQEC