Application of the Electro-Optical Kerr Effect in Physical-Chemical Analysis of Binary Systems

Applications of the electro-optical Kerr effect in physical-chemical analysis of binary mixtures are reviewed. Improvements in the experimental techniques, in particular, development of the pulsed and alternating electric field based approaches, have led to significant advances in this area. However, problems associated with the description of the internal field of liquids remain and hamper broader applications of the techniques. It is shown that a further progress in the electro-optical Kerr effect characterization of chemical systems relies on the development of a more general theory of optical properties of condensed phase chemical mixtures that can account for nonlinear effects, such as hyperpolarizability, dispersion and specific conditions of the Kerr constant measurements.