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oersted • yesterday at 9:20 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

This is the second sentence:

> Nonlinear phenomena become relevant only when the input light is very intense. Typically, in order to observe nonlinear phenomena, an intensity of the electromagnetic field of light larger than 108 V/m (and thus comparable to the atomic electric field of ~1011 V/m) is required.

I don’t know anything about this field. Can you address this point? How close are we to overcoming this in academia?


Replies

amelius • yesterday at 9:30 PM

10^8 V/m, yeah that is quite a lot, 100V per micron or 1MV/cm. Even if it works it's going to have reliability issues, especially since the structures are not going to be perfect.

DoctorOetker • yesterday at 11:22 PM

ignore the sibling comment by amelius

for a laser the intensity in the wavelength / frequency domain is very high, because it is coherent radiation

it just means you can use a (low power) laser to produce nonlinear optical effects.