Nanosecond cw Visible-IR All-Optical Switching and Nonlinear Transmission with a Nonlinear Organic Optical Liquid in Bulk and Guided Wave Geometry

In this presentation, we describe another promising organic material that enables all-optical switching in an extremely wide time scales spanning sub-nanoseconds to cw regime - a nonlinear neat organic liquid (L34) in bulk or wave-guided [fiber core] structure. In the visible spectrum [400-700 nm], quantitative z-scan and pump-probe techniques have shown that in the sub-nanosecond time scales, the dominant nonlinear absorption processes are two-photon coupled to excited state absorption processes characterized by an intrinsic two photon absorption coefficient of ~5 cm/GW, and an intensity dependent effective two-photon absorption coefficient that can be over 200 cm/GW. For longer time scales, the transparency of the liquid allows doping with appropriate absorbers to generate efficient thermal/density and nonlinear scattering effects [as well as guided mode extinction in fiber geometry] for all-optical switching operations. Accordingly, one may envision single material constituent device capable of all-time scale optical switching applications.