Laser induced memory bits in photorefractive LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We study experimentally the formation of refractive index voxels (volume elements) in photorefractive LiNbO 3 and LiTaO 3 crystals illuminated with high irradiance femtosecond laser pulses. We used 150 fs pulses at 800 nm wavelength (energy 6-50 nJ) tightly focused inside the crystals in a single shot regime. This resulted in a formation of a micrometer size region of elevated refractive index, which may be used as memory bits in information storage/retrieval application. The maximum refractive index change of 510 -4 was recorded in undoped LiNbO 3 at an average light intensity of TW/cm 2 that is close to the breakdown threshold. A simple setup for photorefractive recording and in situ monitoring of the refractive index changes has been proposed. 2008 Springer-Verlag.

published proceedings

  • APPLIED PHYSICS A-MATERIALS SCIENCE & PROCESSING

author list (cited authors)

  • Juodkazis, S., Mizeikis, V., Sudzius, M., Misawa, H., Kitamura, K., Takekawa, S., ... Rode, A. V.

citation count

  • 20

complete list of authors

  • Juodkazis, Saulius||Mizeikis, Vygantas||Sudzius, Markas||Misawa, Hiroaki||Kitamura, Kenji||Takekawa, Shunji||Gamaly, Eugene G||Krolikowski, Wieslaw Z||Rode, Andrei V

publication date

  • October 2008