Abstract
An exceptional peculiarity of orientational nonlinear optics of liquid crystals (LC) is the crucial role of geometrical factors, Even with one beam, they determine the presence of threshold, the spatial scale, and the sign of light-induced perturbations, and the modulation character of the beams. That allows us to achieve multibeam interactions with the most unusual properties. Two beams, for example, can travel through LC either totally compensating the perturbations that each one separately would have created, or the interaction of the beams with LC, and hence, with each other, can switch on at some threshold (angles of incidence as well as intensities), or there can be no threshold at all for the influence of light on LC. All these processes including thresholdless interaction may imply bistable states controlled by geometrical parameters. Ambiguity appears in the relationship between the medium's parameters and the intensity of exciting light (intrinsic optical bistability).
© 1992 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
A.D. Lloyd and B.S. Wherrett
ThE.9 Optical Bistability (OBI) 1988
Armando Piccardi, Alessandro Alberucci, Nina Kravets, Oleksander Buchnev, Malgosia Kaczmarek, and Gaetano Assanto
NW3A.2 Nonlinear Photonics (NP) 2014
F. Simoni, F. Bloisi, and L. Vicari
PTu071 International Quantum Electronics Conference (IQEC) 1992