High-efficiency energy transfer due to stimulated orientational scattering of light in nematic liquid crystals

The saturation stage of stimulated orientational scattering (SOS) of light in thick planarly aligned nematic-liquid-crystal layers was observed and studied experimentally. The power efficiency of o-wave pump conversion exceeded 90%. Both saturation of transmitted pump power and cascading of SOS were observed. The latter indicated that, for higher than ∼50% conversion efficiencies, inverse conversion of the scattered e-polarized signal into wide-angle speckle, o-polarized background started to take place, leading to partial depletion of the primarily scattered e wave. Results were in good qualitative agreement with conventional SOS theory.