Nonlinear Response of a Suspension Medium to Millimeter-Wavelength Radiation

Abstract

A nonperturbative method for describing the response of an orientational Kerr medium to arbitrarily strong electromagnetic fields is presented. The method is used to analyze recent phase-shift measurements for the static birefringence and new measurements for the time response of a suspension medium as functions of millimeter-wave intensity. Excellent agreement between theory and experiment provides the effective parameters in terms of which the nonlinear optical properties of the medium are assessed for applications to the millimeter-wave regime.