Sensitivity and fatigue of LiTaO3 for holographic recording

Abstract

The sensitivity of crystals of LiTaO3 to hologram formation has been observed to vary with impurity concentration from a value comparable to the most sensitive doped LiNbO3 for an impure crystal to a value more than five orders of magnitude smaller for a purer crystal. Fatigue effects were observed upon write-erase cycling. These effects were dependent upon writing and erasure polarization and power and could be virtually elim proper choice of optical parameters. --------------\AWork by Chen 1 has indicated that LiTa0 3 is ese than LiNb03 to laser induced refractive index changes. Other workers 2 have found some LiTa0 3 crystals to be insusceptible to laser damage. Our measurements indicate that, although a pure LiTa03 crystal is less sensitive to phase hologram formation than pure LiNb033, impurities in LiTa03 can increase the sensitivity to a value comparable to that of the most sensitive doped LiNb03In LiTaO3 the sensitivity to hologram formation was observed to decrease after repeated cycles of writineand_otical erasure, i.e. (NASA-CR13 6 7 6 7) SENSITIVITY AND FATIGUE OF N75-18545.