Abstract

We introduce the concept of traveling grating envelopes to study the erasure dynamics in bulk photorefractive media. This new technique provides considerable physical insight into the observed photorefractive transients. We propose and demonstrate experimentally, in a Ce-doped SBN:60 crystal, two novel ways of extending the grating lifetime by trapping the grating envelope inside the medium. The incident beam ratio and the readout geometry have the largest effect on how long the grating can be read out.

© 1994 Optical Society of America

Evolution and propagation of grating envelopes during erasure in bulk photorefractive media

Muthu Jeganathan, Matthew C. Bashaw, and Lambertus Hesselink
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 12(7) 1370-1383 (1995)

Optical trap activation in a photorefractive polymer

S. M. Silence, G. C. Bjorklund, and W. E. Moerner
Opt. Lett. 19(22) 1822-1824 (1994)

Measurement of the envelope function of the index grating in photorefractive crystals

Hideki Okamura, Kazuo Kuroda, Hiroyoshi Yajima, Ken Iizuka, and Masahide Itoh
Opt. Lett. 18(16) 1305-1307 (1993)

Diffraction from thermally fixed gratings in a photorefractive medium: steady-state and transient analysis

M. Jeganathan and L. Hesselink
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 11(9) 1791-1799 (1994)

Effect of applied fields on the Bragg condition and the diffraction efficiency in photorefractive crystals

Raymond De Vré, Muthu Jeganathan, Jeffrey P. Wilde, and Lambertus Hesselink
Opt. Lett. 19(12) 910-912 (1994)