Optical damage and light-induced absorption in near-stoichiometric LiTaO/sub 3/ crystal

Summary form only given. Recently, Kitamura et al. (1999) compared the electric fields required for ferroelectric domain reversal between the conventional congruent LiTaO/sub 3/ crystal (CLT) and a near-stoichiometric one (SLT) which was grown by a novel double crucible Czochralski method equipped with an automatic powder supply system. It was found that the electric field for domain switching in SLT was decreased to be less than 1.7 kV/mm. This value is about one thirteenth of that for the conventional CLT. This low coercive field in SLT is increasing the interest in domain engineering of optical devices for a variety of frequency conversion applications. We investigated nonstoichiometry dependence of undesirable photorefraction and light-induced absorption in LiTaO/sub 3/.