All-optical switching effect with low background and high stability

Two control beams (a linearly and a circularly polarized) are used to pump poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) films doped with azobenzene chromophore Disperse Red 1 (DR1), and the all-optical switching effects with low background and high stability are reported. The switching effects are experimentally investigated by changing the pump conditions of two control beams. Experiments show that the circularly polarized pump beam can disorder the oriented chromophores and speed up the relaxation of photo-induced birefringence, consequently decrease the background and increase the stability and the extinction ratio of the switching signals.

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