Abstract

The propagation characteristics of a laser beam can be modified by nonlinear optical processes that proceed via light self-action. Besides being connected with some very important aspects in the nonlinear matter-radiation interaction these effects can find several uses in optoelectronic devices. For this reason the primary interest is directed towards enhancing their efficiency by judicious choice of the nonlinear material. Up till now this effort has been concentrated on photoinduced level shifts and population changes to provoke rapid modifications of either the absorption or refraction indices of a medium in order to modify and control the longitudinal characteristics of the laser beam along its propagation direction. However equally important is to reach similar control on the transverse characteristics and in particular on the polarization state of an optical beam. We are interested in this problem and here we show that this can be achieved by the use of hybrid nonlinear optical processes that proceed via magnetooptical interactions. Such processes are of certain fundamental interest too but are in general weak and the main problem here is to enhance them by appropriate choice of the materials.

© 1992 Optical Society of America