Abstract

Electrons have until now been considered as the only charge carriers involved in the photorefractive effect on Bi₁₂SiO₂₀. We observed that the excitation rate of holes in such a crystal is actually about one-third of that for electrons. We use the recently published theory for hole-electron competition in photorefractive materials^1,2 to determine the average distance traveled by both carriers between excitation and recombination, their respective optical absorption coefficients, and the density of photorefractive sites. This set of parameters is obtained from beam-coupling gain measurements and time constants of light-induced grating erasures.

© 1986 Optical Society of America