Abstract

Conjugated polymers are of fundamental interest because they are model 1-dimensional semiconductors. They are also attractive candidate materials for nonlinear optical signal processing applications,^{[1] [2] [3]} and they differ from 2-D III-V materials in one important way. The cross-sections of ground state fundamental vibration-to-exciton transitions are large for conjugated polymers, whereas they are typically small for III-Vs. The phonon-mediated nonlinear responses of each of these systems is determined by how strongly their phonons are coupled to the exciton resonance.

© 1990 Optical Society of America