Determination of Material Parameters of Photorefractive Crystals Using Adaptive Holographic Interferometry

Abstract

Holographic interferometry methods, based on mixing of a stationary reference light beam and a phase-modulated signal beam at the related perturbations of the dielectric tensor in photosensitive crystals, have been applied to measure material parameters determining the value of these perturbations. Experimental conditions, under which one can distinguish contributions to the mixing from the flexoelectric and electrogyration effects in cubic photorefractive sillenite crystals, are determined, and the necessity of taking into account the contribution from the flexogyration effect is demonstrated.

Fraunhofer diffraction pattern due to spatial self-phase modulation of a Gaussian beam by a photorefractive crystal

“…They are recognized to have a great diversity of applications such as high-density holographic data recording [5,6] micro and nano-particle manipulation [7], construction of holographic diffraction gratings [8], and optical waveguides [9]. In addition, considerable efforts have been devoted to PhRC characterization [10,12] taking advantage of the optical nonlinearity, particularly the refractive index modulation effect that occurs when they interact with a laser light beam.…”