Nonlinear optics and spectroscopy

ing's vector it follows that the light amplitude at the focal spot would reach 108 volts per centimeter, comparable to the electric field internal to the atoms and molecules responsible for the binding of valence electrons. These are literally pulled out of their orbits in multiphoton tunneling processes, and any material will be converted to a highly ionized dense plasma at these flux densities. It is clear that the familiar notion of a linear optical response with a constant index of refraction, that is, an induced polarization proportional to the amplitude of the light field, should be dropped at much less extreme intensities. There is a nonlinearity in the constitutive relationship which may be expanded in terms of a power series in the electric field components