Probing Optical Nonlinearities of Unconventional Glass Nanocomposites Made of Ionic Liquid Crystals and Bimetallic Nanoparticles.

In this paper, we report the synthesis and characterization of unconventional nanocomposites made of bimetallic nanoparticles dispersed in a liquid crystal glass. Core-shell bimetallic nanoparticles (Ag/Au or Au/Ag) and Ag-Au bimetallic nanoalloys are synthesized using cadmium alkanoate glass-forming liquid crystals as nanoreactors. Optical spectra of the produced glassy nanocomposites exhibit a distinctive absorption peak due to a surface plasmon resonance.

Enhanced Nonlinear Optical Effect in Hybrid Liquid Crystal Cells Based on Photonic Crystal.

Nonlinear-optical response of photorefractive hybrid liquid crystal (LC) cells has been studied by means of dynamic holographic technique in two-wave mixing arrangement. The LC cells include nonuniform silicon substrates comprising a micrometer-range photonic crystal. A thin LC layer is set between silicon substrate and a flat glass substrate covered by a transparent (ITO) electrode.

Ability of dynamic holography in self-assembled hybrid nanostructured silica films for all-optical switching and multiplexing.

Unlabelled: The sol-gel method has been employed in the fabrication of easily processable mesostructured films consisting of a nonionic surfactant and silica as the inorganic component. The ability of the occluded Pluronic P123 mesostructures to solubilize guest molecules made these films ideal host matrices for organic dyes and molecular assemblies, possessing substantial nonlinear susceptibilities. These films were explored for use as the photonic layer in all-optical time-to-space converters and proved successful at increasing the optical response of the intercalated dyes to a point that would make these composite films applicable for use as the photonic layer.

Ginzburg-Landau equation for dynamical four-wave mixing in gain nonlinear media with relaxation.

We consider the dynamical degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) model in a cubic nonlinear medium including both the time relaxation of the induced nonlinearity and the nonlocal coupling. The initial ten-dimensional FWM system can be rewritten as a three-variable intrinsic system (namely, the intensity pattern, the amplitude of the nonlinearity, and the total net gain) which is very close to the pumped Maxwell-Bloch system. In the case of a purely nonlocal response the initial system reduces to a real damped sine-Gordon (SG) equation.

Dynamic holography in bacteriorhodopsin/gelatin films: effects of light-dark adaptation at different humidity.

This work examines the kinetics of dynamic holography responses in light-adapted and dark-adapted bacteriorhodopsin (BR) films at different humidity. We have demonstrated that the kinetics of the diffraction efficiency in wild type BR films is quite different in dark-adapted and light-adapted samples. The holographic recording kinetics, which depends on the duration of incubation in the dark after light adaptation at different humidity values, was studied in depth.