Chang Yun-Ching, Wang Chao, Yin Shizhuo, Hoffman Robert C, Mott Andrew G
Department of Electrical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Opt Express. 2013 Jul 29;21(15):17760-8. doi: 10.1364/OE.21.017760.
The unique physical effect-Kovacs effect is explored to enhance the performance of EO modulators by employing the non-thermal equilibrium state nanodisordered KTN crystals created by super-cooling process, which can have a significant 3.5 fold increase in quadratic electro-optic coefficient. This enables to reduce the switching half wave voltage (almost by half) so that a broadband (~GHz range) and large field of view (+/-30 deg) electro-optic modulator can be realized with much lowered driving power, which can be very useful for a variety of applications: laser Q-switches, laser pulse shaping, high speed optical shutters and modulating retro reflectors.
通过采用过冷过程产生的非热平衡态纳米无序KTN晶体来探索独特的物理效应——科瓦奇效应，以提高电光调制器的性能，这种晶体的二次电光系数可显著提高3.5倍。这使得开关半波电压得以降低（几乎减半），从而能够以低得多的驱动功率实现宽带（~GHz范围）和大视场（±30度）的电光调制器，这对于多种应用非常有用：激光Q开关、激光脉冲整形、高速光快门和调制后向反射镜。
