Abstract
A breakthrough in the search for new photorefractive materials occurred with the prediction and discovery of photorefractive liquid crystals (LC).1,2 Photorefractive LC solve two key problems: first, the voltage necessary to apply to the photorefractive material for realization of wave mixing was reduced from kilovolts to volts and, second, the modulation of the refractive index of the material can be as large as 0.2. The difference between the diffusion constants D+ and D− of photogenerated positive and negative ions is the reason for charge separation and space charge formation in photoconductive LC. The diffusive photorefractive field Ed readily saturates when the photoconductivity prevails against dark conductivity, and its amplitude can be evaluated as.
© 1998 Optical Society of America
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