Abstract
The propagation behavior of the weak polarized wave in media with laser induced anisot-ropy is theoretically analyzed on the basis of a tensor operator formalism. Functional relation-ships are presented between the nonlinear spectroscopy (saturation and polarization variants) signal (NSS) on one hand and the intensity, arbitrary polarizations and propagation direc-tions of the pump and probe waves, the third-order nonlinear susceptibility (3NS) on the other hand. A novel method for nonlinear polarization spectroscopy (NPS) is proposed that is based on investigating the dependence of polarization alterations of the test wave and its intensity behind the crossed analyzer on the pump beam ellipticity. Detection of the extreme values of the ellipticity allows determination of the real and imaginary parts of the 3NS and their ratio. The polarization conditions are given for which the NSS does not depend on the ellipticity of pumping. The optimum optical density value of the sample is derived for the NPS experi-ments. The results obtained for the polarization dependence of the NPS signal are in good agreement with experimental reports.
