Optical second harmonic generation from a thin chiral film

Abstract

We present a simple model for calculating the second-order optical response of a film of chiral molecules. The difference in the output signal for right or left circularly polarized input is analyzed. A strong enhancement in the normalized differential signal is found for p-polarized output. This is due to the existence of Brewster angles which are slightly different for R or L circular input. This feature has no analog in the linear signal, since in that case the two Brewster angles coincide.