Abstract

It has recently been shown that amorphous solids can be used as volume holographic recording media by means of sufficiently intense write beams of the correct wavelength. Photoactivated alkali-ion migration has been found to be responsible for permanent grating formation in doped silicate and phosphate glasses. These experimental measurements¹ used an argon laser for writing and a HeNe laser for reading, detecting both transient and permanent gratings. In GeO[2]-doped silicate glass,² however, a UV absorption band was bleached with an excimer-pumped dye laser, resulting in prism effects and permanent grating formation that was observable at infrared wavelengths.

© 1990 Optical Society of America