No abstract

It is shown within the conventional photovoltaic charge-transport model that photoexcitable electrons, localized at deep impurity levels, can be effectively removed by light from the exposed area at sufficiently high temperatures. This allows to modify strongly the absorption and photoelectric properties of the material and, in particular, to suppress "optical damage" in LiNbO 3 and LiTaO 3 crystals. This optical cleaning method is applicable to numerous pyro-and piezo-electric optical materials. It employs the photovoltaic drift of electrons and ionic charge compensation at elevated temperatures. The physics of the optical cleaning is very rich; it has strong links to nonlinear dynamics and offers important handles for improvement of the cleaning performance. The use of properly moving light beams leads, e.g., to a strong enhancement of the cleaning rate and allows to reduce the electron concentration by several orders of magnitude. The theoretical predictions are supported by the data of our cleaning experiments with LiNbO 3 crystals. In particular, the intensity threshold of optical damage is increased by three orders of magnitude.

We show, theoretically and experimentally, that the buildup of the space-charge field in photorefractive crystals is far from monoexponential for circular light beams. This is a general property of the two-dimensional (2D) case, in contrast to the one-dimensional case. The results form a basis for determination of the photoelectric parameters of photorefractive crystals within a wide intensity range, which is important, e.g., for solving of the optical-damage problem in LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 crystals.

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Volume holographic gratings are recorded and retrieved in two commercially available glasses: Schott Foturan and Hoya PEG3. These materials are photoetchable, which describes their major application, but they also allow storage of volume holograms without any chemical etching. The samples are illuminated with ultraviolet light at a wavelength of 325 nm and thermally processed to achieve a maximum diffraction efficiency of Ϸ9% for a 1-mm-thick sample. The two glasses show similar behavior; the diffraction efficiencies in Foturan tend to be slightly larger, whereas PEG3 tends to have weaker light scattering.