Polarization spectroscopy with arbitrary polarized noncollinear pumping

We present a theoretical analysis of a noncollinear polarization-spectrosco py (PS) scheme, taking into account the polarization incoherence of an arbi trarily polarized pump beam. It is based on a light-induced anisotropy (LIA ) tensor formalism. Our most important results are analytical expression fo r the LIA tensor, which permit classification of the nonlinear medium with LIA in terms of the polarization properties. An expression is derived for t he dependence of the PS-signal intensity on the beam-crossing angle, and th e usefulness of that expression for spectroscopic purposes is demonstrated. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 300.6420, 260.5430.