SCALING LAW FOR THE DYNAMICS OF INDUCED ABSORPTIVE OPTICAL NONLINEARITIES

We investigate the dynamical behaviour of the transmitted light intensity of an induced absorber for incoming triangular light pulses. The parameters of the optical nonlinearity can be chosen to describe bistable or monostable input-output characteristics, The results indicate that the blowing up of the hysteresis loop with decreasing pulse length follows in both cases the same power law with an exponent between 0.6 and 2/3, depending on the sweep rate and the definition of the switching point. The numerically evaluated dynamics is compared to experimental results using the photo-thermally induced absorption in CdS at a wavelength of 514.5 nm. In this case, the different input-output characteristics can easily be realized by means of different light polarizations relative to the crystals c-axis. Good agreement between experiment and simulation is found.