Coherent beam amplification with dynamic holograms in glass-forming molecular azobenzene-based materials

Abstract

Self-diffraction of two coherent light waves that record a holographic grating in thin films of azobenzene-containing molecular glass-forming materials is used for intensity enhancement of a weak beam in expense of the strong beam intensity. The intensity of a weak probe beam is doubled at interaction length of only 8 µm thus pointing to a very high specific coupling constant. The characteristic time of the intensity redistribution is relatively long, on the order of 200 s. Consequently, the underlying process of pronounced Kerr-type optical nonlinearity is related, most probably, to the photoinduced mass transfer.

Relaxation Polarization Dependence of Circular Vector Gratings in Azobenzene Glassy Molecular Films

“…These materials have found numerous applications in optoelectronics including holographic information recording and holographic light amplification [4,5]. In the recent years, azobenzene molecular glassy films have attracted attention in this respect [6][7][8]. It was concluded that grating recording and readout by orthogonal circularly polarized (L-left rotation of the electric field vector of light or R-its right rotation) light beams is the most efficient.…”