Abstract

Optical birefringence (the high frequency Kerr effect) takes place when a strong laser beam interacts with a medium. This effect, also called the optical Kerr effect (OKE), has been the subject of numerous theoretical and experimental studies in a wide variety of liquids, molecular crystals, and biomolecular substances in nanosecond, picosecond, and femtosecond time domains. A study of optically induced birefringence may provide among others information on conformations of molecules in the liquid state and their interactions. This is especially true in the case of thermal variations of OKE, from which additional information about the local structure of the liquids can be derived and the mean value of the second rank tensor of optical hyperpolarizability can be obtained.

© 1989 Optical Society of America