Abstract

Recently considerable attention has been paid to crystals with doped centers (DC), These crystals serve as passive Q switches and laser active elements for visible and IR spectral ranges. A study of the resonant absorption resulting from DC is rather actual since the developing of a DC model opens the possibility of mostly effective use of doped crystals in practice. Very important and, sometimes, unique information about the DC physics can be obtained by means of nonlinear absorption anisotropy method that is complementary to the well-known polarized luminescence technique. Its development for both LiF:F₂^- and YAG:Cr⁴⁺- doped crystals has helped us obtain new nonlinear phenomena as well as understand DC nature in these crystals.¹'² In particular, it has been shown that powerful resonant radiation propagating through the doped crystal is accompanied both by polarization and orientation anisotropy of crystal absorption at saturation and self-induced change of polarization state of the wave.

© 1996 Optical Society of America