Abstract

This paper is a quantitative study of the two basic mechanisms which are at the origin of the very large optical nonlinearities of critical microemulsions.^|1| Water in oil microemulsions can be thought of as stable suspensions of surfactant coated water droplets (a few nanometers in diameter) in an oil rich continuum. Due to attractive interactions between the droplets, such systems usually give rise to critical (consolute) points. The vicinity of such points is characterized by very large thermally excited concentration fluctuations.

© 1988 Optical Society of America