Abstract

The third-order optical nonlinearities, whose potential for optical processing and switching has been understood for many years, have not found wide applications, for the simple reason that typical χ⁽³⁾ is too small to make the devices based on it practical. Recently, however, a significant progress has been made on the way to change this unfortunate situation, by using cascaded second order nonlinear processes in order to achieve the effective third-order nonlinearity. This method, first realized in [1],[2] suggests the use of the parametric interaction between fundamental and second-harmonic waves in order to obtain effective χ⁽³⁾ proportional to |χ⁽²⁾|². More recently, a number of cascading schemes utilizing surface-emitting second-harmonic generation in a resonator have been proposed [3].

© 1996 Optical Society of America