Abstract

Photo-anisotropic effects are useful for many photonic applications such as optical storage^[1,2], optical switch^[3,4], optical waveguide^[5,6], optical display^[7] and optical limiter^[8]. However, several factors such as molecular movement and electrostatic interactions reduce the photo-anisotropy effects^[9]. We report a technique for significant enhancement of photoanisotropic effect using two laser beams with orthogonal polarization resulting in optimization of molecular anisotropic distribution. We also demonstrate an all-optical switch with the novel feature of output sign-control.

© 2002 Optical Society of America