Theoretical study of light-molecule nonlinear interactions

Sammanfattning: The work presented in the thesis concerned theoretical study of light-matter nonlinear interactions. Two important aspects of such interactions have been examined, namely the nonlinear optical properties of a series of organic charge transfer molecules in solutions induced by the laser light and the propagation of the ultrafast high power laser through the nonlinear molecular medium. Special attention has been paid to understand the solvent effects on the two-photon absorption of a symmetrical diamino substituted distyrylbenzene chromophore, for which time-dependent density functional theory in combination with polarizable continuum model (PCM) have been employed. The dielectric medium alone has a rather small effect both on the bond length alternation and on the one-photon absorption spectrum, but noticeable effects on the two-photon absorption cross section. Both one- and two-photon absorptions are found to be extremely sensitive to the planarity of the molecule. Our calculations indicate that the experimentally observed anomalous solvent effect on the two-photon absorption of dialkylamino substituted distyrylbenzene chromophores can not be attributed to the intrinsic properties of a single molecule and its interaction with solvents. With the same theoretical approaches, two-photon absorption properties of interacting polar chromophores have been investigated to examine the validity of the widely used exciton model. Our first principles calculations have shown that the exciton model offers a conceptually simple interpretation for experimental observations, but is lack of predictability. The second part of the thesis is to investigate the propagation of ultrashort laser pulse through a one-dimensional asymmetric organic molecular medium by solving full Maxwell-Bloch equations using predictor-corrector finite-difference time-domain method. It focuses on the supercontinuum generation of spectra and the formation of attosecond pulses. It is shown that the supercontinuum generation is strongly modulated by both area and width of the pulse, which results from the interference between the splitting pulses in time-domain and is the implication of the time-energy uncertainty relation. The presence of permanent dipole moment in molecular medium has noticeable effects on the supercontinuum generation. Our calculations show that a well-shaped 132 attosecond pulse can be generated from a two femtosecond incoming pulse under certain conditions. Influences of carrier-envelope phase and time-dependent ionization on the spectral and temporal evolutions of the ultrashort pulses have also been discussed.