Non-volatile volume holograms in bismuth tellurite crystals

Volatile and permanent optical gratings recorded in Bi2TeO5 photorefractive crystal under high cw intensity

We report the recording of optical gratings on photorefractive $ {{\rm Bi}_2}{{\rm TeO}_5} $Bi₂TeO₅ crystals using $ \lambda = 532\,\,{\rm nm} $λ=532nm wavelength light. We studied the behavior of this material under high light intensity and found the presence of fast and slow gratings, both of photorefractive nature and exhibiting quite significant light intensity dependence for the $ 1 - 13\,\,{\rm kW}/{{\rm m}^2} $1-13kW/m² range. A permanent grating was found after the complete erasure of fast and slow holograms recorded at room temperature. The experimental results show that the diffraction efficiency of the permanent grating increases with the recorded light intensity. The permanent grating performance as an optical Bragg filter was characterized by measuring the angular selectivity approximately 1.0 mrad. We also show that the diffraction efficiency of the permanent grating is quite dependent on the direction of light polarization.