Abstract
Liquid crystals materials form a special class of nonlinear optical materials. They are generally composed of highly nonlinear and anisotropie molecules, and possess a number of structurally different fluid phases in a readily accessible temperature range [1]. The optical properties of such media are easily modified by external perturbations because of the high molecular anisotropy, low viscosity of molecular motion, and strong correlation between molecules. The fact that even a weak laser field is strong enough to cause a significant change in the optical properties makes liquid crystals most unusual as nonlinear optical materials. Many nonlinear optical effects, including a few highly nonlinear ones, can be easily observed in thin films of such materials [2]. In this paper, we shall focus our discussion on the nonlinear optical properties of liquid crystals.
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References
See, for example, E. B. Priestley, P. J. Wojtowicz, and P. Sheng, Introduction to Liquid Crystals ( Plenum Press, New York, 1975 );
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© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Shen, Y.R. (1986). Liquid Crystals as Nonlinear Optical Materials. In: Gibbs, H.M., Mandel, P., Peyghambarian, N., Smith, S.D. (eds) Optical Bistability III. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 8. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-46580-2_41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-46580-2_41
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