Two-color plane-wave holography in reduced, near-stoichiometric lithium niobate

Summary form only given. Two-color, or photon-gated, holographic recording materials show promise for applications such as optical data storage where nondestructive readout is required. Undoped, reduced lithium niobate with stoichiometry higher than the congruent composition can show sensitivities approaching that of irondoped congruent lithium niobate. Two color recording involves a sensitizing step in which a metastable level is populated with blue/green light and subsequently ionized by writing light at 852 nm followed by deep trapping of the electron. We have measured the growth and decay of plane wave holograms as a function of the degree of reduction for a crystal of LiNbO/sub 3/.