After brief introduction of our new microscope unit with an immersion objective and ionic liquid used as a refractive index matching medium, in this paper, we describe the studies on dipole orientation imaging of single molecules under high vacuum conditions as one of the important applications of our microscope.

We previously developed a new terahertz (THz) wave detection method that utilizes the effect of nonlinear optical (NLO) polymers. The new method provided us with a gapless detection, a wide detection bandwidth, and a simpler optical geometry in the THz wave detection. In this paper, polarization dependences in THz wave detection by the Stark effect were investigated. The projection model was employed to analyze the polarization dependences and the consistency with experiments was observed qualitatively, surely supporting the use of the first-order Stark effect in this method. The relations between THz wave detection by the Stark effect and Stark spectroscopy or electroabsorption spectroscopy are also discussed.

The optical properties of new tricyanopyrroline (TCP)-based chromophores with a benzyloxy group bound to aminobenzene donor unit were characterized by hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS), absorption spectrum, and 1H-NMR measurements, and the influence of the benzyloxy group on TCP-based chromophores was discussed based on the data. A positive effect of NLO properties was found in TCP-based NLO chromophores with a benzyloxy group compared with benchmark NLO chromophores without the benzyloxy group, suggesting an influence of intra-molecular hydrogen bond. Furthermore, we propose a formation of double intra-molecular hydrogen bonds in the TCP chromophore with monoene as the π-conjugation bridge and aminobenzene with a benzyloxy group as the donor unit.

A transmission ellipsometric method without an aperture was recently developed to characterize the electro-optic (EO) performance of EO polymers. The method permits much simpler optical setup compared to the reflection method, and allows easy performance of the incident angle dependence measurements using a conventional glass substrate and uncollimated beam. This paper shows the usefulness of this method for a simple and reliable evaluation of the EO coefficient both for organic and inorganic EO materials, as well as analysis for uniaxial anisotropic materials.

We investigated the photochemical stability of an electro-optic (EO) polymer under laser irradiation at 1310nm to reveal photodegradation mechanisms. It was found that one-photon absorption excitation assisted with the thermal energy at the temperature is involved in the photodegradation process, in contrast to our previous studies at a wavelength of 1550nm where two-photon absorption excitation is involved in the photodegradation process. Thus, both the excitation wavelength and the thermal energy strongly affect to the degradation mechanism. In any cases, the photodegradation of EO polymers is mainly related to the generation of exited singlet oxygen.

We prepared a bR thin film by the wire-bar coating technique, and investigated the transient photo-current characteristics of the bR photocell. The transient photo-current signal of bR photocells prepared by the wire-bar coating technique and the dip coating technique was compared. An almost identical transient photo-current signal intensity was obtained both for the wire-bar coating technique and dip coating technique, while the thickness of bR thin film prepared by the wire-bar coating technique is slightly thinner than that prepared by the dip-coating technique. Transparent conductive oxide dependence of the transient photo-current signal is almost the same dependence for the bR photocells with a bR thin film prepared by both techniques. Application of the wire-bar coating technique is significant from the viewpoints of the bR's sample consumption as well as simplicity of sample preparation.