PHOTOINDUCED BIREFRINGENCE AND NUMERICAL SOLUTION OF A NEW DYNAMIC MODEL IN AN AMORPHOUS COPOLYMER CONTAINING AZOBENZENE GROUPS*

Photoinduced birefringence is investigated in a new amorphous copolymer containing azobenzene groups. Thelevels of birefringence signal are found to depend on the polarization angle between the pump beam and the probe beam, andon the ellipticity of the pump beam. Both the growth and decay processes of the birefringence signal can be described byknown biexponential equations. The rate constants and the amplitudes associated with the growth process of thephotoinduced birefringence are observed to display a linear dependence with the pump beam intensity. A new dynamicmodel of the photoinduced birefringence is presented taking into account the contributions of both the trans and cis isomersof azobenzene groups and the local polymer segments. The numerical treatment of this model shows good agreement with theexperimental data in the whole writing-erasing processes of the photoinduced birefringence conducted in our polymersamples.