Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2011
This paper presents some recent theoretical and experimental work carried out in the author's laboratory on the nonlinear optical properties of organic polymers. The ab initio SCF theory has been used with the finite field method to calculate the third order nonlinearity of conjugated structures in order to understand the effect of conjugation and the role of substituents. Experimental studies of third order resonant nonlinearlty in polythiophenes and cumylphenoxy phthalocyanine, the latter in the form of Langmuir-Blodgett films, are presented using femtosecond degenerate four wave mixing.