Liu Youwen, Kitamura Kenji, Takekawa Shunji, Ravi Ganesan, Nakamura Masaru, Furukawa Yasunori, Hatano Hideki
Advanced Materials Laboratory, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan.
Appl Opt. 2004 Nov 1;43(31):5778-83. doi: 10.1364/ao.43.005778.
Lifetimes of two-color nonvolatile holograms recorded in undoped or in slightly doped near-stoichiometric lithium niobate and tantalate crystals were measured and compared by extrapolation of the high-temperature data. A proton-compensation mechanism dominated the dark decay and yielded similar activation energies, of 1.05 and 1.10 eV, for near-stoichiometric lithium niobate and tantalate crystals, respectively. The lifetime of holograms in lithium tantalate was 1 order of magnitude longer than that in lithium niobate with the same proton concentration, which was consistent with our theoretical estimation. The projected lifetime of two-color holograms in lithium tantalate without observable OH-absorption is longer than 50 years.
