Coherent phenomena involved in the time-resolved optical Kerr effect

The effect of parametric coupling between pump and probe beams in time-resolved optical Kerr effect is theoretically discussed for various experimental configurations. It is shown that with a circularly polarized pump beam, the polarization changes induced on a nearly collinear probe beam are due to this coherence effect only. In other configurations, this parametric coupling can appear as an additional contribution to the observed signal, especially when pump and probe are derived from the same laser beam. It is pointed out that this coupling can occur not only when the pump and probe beams are at the same wavelength, but also when the difference or the sum of their frequencies can excite a Raman or a two-photon resonance in the medium.