Abstract

Photorefractive gratings stored in single-crystal strontium barium niobate (SBN) are shown to provide electrically controlled diffraction. The diffraction can be temporally modulated by applying a time-varying electric field along the c-axis. This effect arises as the result of large nonlinear electro-optic and dielectric effects near the diffuse ferroelectric phase transition, which is around 30°C for SBN:75 and 70°C for SBN:61. Measurements are provided for SBN:75 that verify a simple model of the field-dependent diffraction.

© 1992 Optical Society of America