Second order optical susceptibilities in alkali halide crystals due to FA color centers Review Article

This paper presents the first calculation of the second order optical nonlinearity of the FA color center for second harmonic generation (SHG) in KCl:Li crystals. The real and imaginary components of the nonlinear susceptibility evaluated over a wide spectral range enclosing the resonance region of the center show interesting feature. Second harmonics generation and three wave mixing processes are nonlinear optical effects based on the second order susceptibility of materials and are very effective in providing laser radiation over a wide range of wavelengths. The density matrix formalism is employed and the equation of motion is solved by second order perturbation to evaluate the nonlinear susceptibility for SHG. It is found that the system shows large resonance-enhanced second order susceptibilities for color center concentration of ∼1023 m−3. A scheme of phase matching in terms of anomalous dispersion of the centers is discussed.