Experimental study of the behaviour of narrow nanosecond laser pulses in biased photorefractive Bi12TiO20

Delphine Wolfersberger (1) , Nicolas Fressengeas (1) , Jean Maufoy (1) , Godefroy Kugel (1)

1 LMOPS - Laboratoire Matériaux Optiques, Photonique et Systèmes

This paper presents an experimental study of the propagation characteristics of a laser pulse in a biased Bi12TiO20 on a nanosecond time scale. Experimental investigations on the self-bending phenomenon in such a crystal with a narrow pulse at b.lambda=532 nm are first reported and confirm our theoretical numerical results: no bending is observed for a 10 ns pulse in the range of kV/cm for the external electric field applied. Regarding these results, systematic investigations have been achieved to study the self-focusing process on a nanosecond time-scale. We evidence that a laser pulse can be self-focused during the very short time of the pulse duration and we investigate the influence on this phenomenon of different parameters, such as the electric field applied

Mots clés: space-charge field; self-bending; self-focusing; transient state; photorefractive effect; pulsed laser

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Delphine Wolfersberger, Nicolas Fressengeas, Jean Maufoy, Godefroy Kugel. Experimental study of the behaviour of narrow nanosecond laser pulses in biased photorefractive Bi12TiO20. Fourth European Conference on Applications of Polar Dielectrics (ECAPD-IV), Aug 1998, Montreux, Switzerland. pp.381-388, ⟨10.1080/00150199908260593⟩. ⟨hal-00256715⟩