Optical Activity and Its Influence on Photorefractive Materials

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the combined effects of optical activity and linear birefringence on photorefractive crystals. The relation of input-output intensity was determined. These results were discussed with regard to the operation and optimization of the conducting PRIZ. The study focused on the crystal Bi12SiO20 (BSO) in order to correlate results with current experimental work at AFIT. The combination of optical activity and the photorefractive effect caused the crystal to be elliptically birefringent; this birefringence was modeled using Jones matrices for computer simulation. The simulation results showed that optical activity does have a noticeable effect, but for the application investigated the effect was small enough that it could be ignored. Recommendations were made to improve the quality of the output image of the PRIZ. More work should be performed in this area to investigate other applications of this phenomenon and also different crystal materials. Bismuth compounds, theses, Silicon oxides.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADA202530

Entities

People

  • Richard J. Padden

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Birefringence
  • Circular Polarization
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Electric Fields
  • Elliptical Polarization
  • Engineering
  • Linear Polarization
  • Materials
  • Modulators
  • Optical Properties
  • Optics
  • Photorefractive Materials
  • Pockels Effect
  • Polarization
  • Polarizers
  • Refractive Index

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Materials Science and Engineering.
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.