| Guest-host interaction has long been a subject of interest in many disciplines. Emphasis is often on how a small amount of guest substance could significantly affect the properties of a host material. This thesis describe our work in studying a guest-host effect where dye-doping of liquid crystalline materials greatly enhances the optical Kerr nonlinearity of the material. The dye molecules, upon excitation and via intermolecular interaction, provides an extra torque to reorient the host molecules, leading to the enhanced optical Kerr nonlinearity.; We carried out a comprehensive study on the dynamics of the photoexcited dye-doped liquid crystalline medium. Using various experimental techniques, we separately characterized the dynamical responses of the relevant molecular species present in the medium following photo-excitation, and thus were able to follow the transient process in which photo-excitation of the dye molecules exert through guest-host interaction a net torque on the host LC material, leading to the observed enhanced molecular reorientation. We also observed for the first time the enhanced reorientation in a pure liquid crystal system, where the guest population is created through photoexcitation of the host molecules themselves. Experimental results agree quantitatively with the time-dependent theory based on a mean-field model of the guest-host interaction. |
