Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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DF: Dielektrische Festkörper

DF 10: Electric, Electromechanical and Optical Properties I

DF 10.8: Talk

Thursday, March 30, 2006, 17:10–17:30, M{\"U}L Elch

Frequency mixing of photorefractive index gratings with ferroelectric domain gratings in lithium niobate crystals — •Ulrich Hartwig¹, Michael Kösters¹, Theo Woike¹, Karsten Buse¹, Alexander Shumelyuk², and Serguey Odoulov² — ¹Institute of Physics, University of Bonn, Wegelerstraße 8, 53115 Bonn, Germany — ²Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences, 252650 Kiev, Ukraine

Copper-doped lithium niobate crystals are periodically poled. Afterwards holographic gratings are recorded into this material using only diffusion for charge redistribution. Readout reveals that the principal grating with grating vector K is strongly suppressed. At the same time sideband gratings with grating vectors K±G appear, where G is the grating vector of the domain pattern. From the measurements the grating vector G and the duty cycle DC (ratio of the width of up- and down domains) of the domain pattern can be calculated. These values are important quality criteria of the periodic structure of the sample. The findings of this work enable nondestructive quality inspection of periodically-poled lithium niobate. Furthermore, conclusions can be drawn for applications involving both holographic gratings and periodic domain structures for, e.g., hybrid distributed-feedback optical parametric oscillators.

*Financial support from the DFG (FOR 557), the Alexander von Humboldt foundation (Research Award to Serguey Odoulov), and from the Deutsche Telekom AG is gratefully acknowledged.