Sum-frequency generation from an isotropic chiral medium

Abstract

We report a theoretical analysis of nonlinear optical sum-frequency generation from the bulk of a chiral liquid in the dipole approximation. In our theoretical formulation the circular birefringence effect of a chiral medium was properly taken into account. The angular dependence of the reflected and transmitted sum-frequency signals on the incident angles of two input beams was calculated to yield the optimal geometry for probing bulk chirality. We also derived a microscopic expression for the totally antisymmetric part of a second-order nonlinear optical susceptibility to elaborate unique features in the studies of chirality-related properties with sum-frequency generation. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.