Abstract

Organic molecular and polymeric systems have emerged as an important class of nonlinear optical materials for various uses. The advantage of a molecular material is the tremendous flexibility it offers to modify its chemical structure and conformation and consequently to tune its nonlinear optical properties. In addition the molecular, specially polymeric materials are also easily conformable to guided wave device structures. In our research, both second-and third-order nonlinearities have been investigated. Efficient second harmonic generation has been observed in several new classes of molecular crystal. Electrooptic effect in the surface plasmon geometry has been investigated for the Langmuir-Blodgett films of side-chain liquid crystalline polymers. Third-order optical nonlinearity in conjugated polymers has been investigated by femtosecond degenerate four-wave mixing. The anisotropy of χ⁽³⁾ in stretch-oriented polymer has been studied. We have also investigated third-order nonlinear optical processes in polymeric waveguides.

© 1989 Optical Society of America