title: Large deuterium isotope effect in the optical nonlinearity of dye-doped liquid crystals.
abstract: Deuterium-hydrogen isotopic substitution was found to approximately double the magnitude of the giant optical nonlinearity of dye-doped nematic liquid crystals arising from photoinduced molecular reorientation. In accordance with the predictions of our model, this doubling is well correlated with the increase in a characteristic decay time of the electronically excited dye anisotropy, as measured with time-resolved fluorescence. A similar isotopic effect is predicted for the optical Kerr nonlinearity of dyed isotropic liquids.
authors.affiliation: Darmstadt University of Technology, Institute of Applied Physics, Hochschulstrasse 6, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kreuzer
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hanisch
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Eidenschink
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Paparo
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Marrucci