Nonlinear Optics, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6 Nonlinear Optics in the Two-Level Approximation

6.1. Introduction

Our treatment of nonlinear optics in the previous chapters has for the most part made use of power series expansions to relate the response of a material system to the strength of the applied optical field. In simple cases, this relation can be taken to be of the form

However, there are circumstances under which such a power series expansion does not converge, and under such circumstances different methods must be employed to describe nonlinear optical effects. One example is that of a saturable absorber, where the absorption coefficient α is related to the intensity ...