Nonlinear optics

JAN 01, 1969

Intense, coherent laser beams permit study of media polarized as the square or third power of field strength. Phenomena include harmonic generation, modulation, stimulated scattering and self‐focusing. Newly available tools utilize picosecond optical pulses.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3615276

J. A. Giordmaine

IN THE TEN YEARS since the invention of the laser, there has occurred a vigorous expansion of research and development in optics comparable with the growth of nuclear physics following the invention of the cyclotron. The impact of the laser on optical physics can be seen not only in the flowering of such previously established fields as inelastic light scattering from excitations in solids, holography, and optical coherence and photon statistics, but also in the birth of entirely new fields such as nonlinear optics, the present subject.

References

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More about the Authors

J. A. Giordmaine. Bell Labs Solid State Spectroscopy Research Department.