Nano-Dispersed Organic Liquid and Liquid Crystals for All-Time-Scales Optical Switching and Tunable Negative-and Zero- Index Materials

摘要

We present an overview of recent results obtained in nano-dispersed nonlinear neat organic liquids and liquid crystals. Experimental observations confirm the enhancement of nonlinear absorption in gold nano-spheres doped neat nonlinear liquids and extension of the bandwidth of efficient all-optical switching operation for visible-near infrared lasers in time scales ranging from sub-picoseconds through nanoseconds and microseconds and longer. Similar nano-particulale doped liquid crystal films also exhibit efficient all-optical switching capabilities for microseconds - cw lasers. Meta-materials fabricated with core-shell nano-spheres dispersed nematic liquid crystals show effective refractive indices that are tunable from negative through zero to positive values.