Abstract

The electrooptic properties of photorefractive materials are currently under intensive investigation because of their potential applications in real-time holography, optical data storage and phase-conjugate wavefront generation. Recently, increasing attention has been focused on two-beam coupling in photorefractive crystals to achieve coherent signal beam amplification. Applications for this technique include image amplification, vibrational analysis, nonreciprocal transmission, laser-gyro biasing and optical computing. Critical issues for practical application of the photorefractive effect include the material's response time and coupling coefficient. If photoferroelectric crystals are to be used for device applications, their response time must be reduced to the order of 1 msec. or better, and a large photorefractive coupling coefficient is required for the construction of efficient devices. The ideal photorefractive crystal has yet to be discovered; hence a large number of ferroelectric crystal compositions have been grown and characterized. As part of this effort, two-beam coupling has been studied in single crystals (0.5 cm. diameter) of cerium-doped Ba_0.5 Sr_1.5 K_0.5 Na_0.75 Nb₅ O₁₅ (BSKNN-3) grown at Rockwell International Science Center.

© 1987 Optical Society of America