Experimental investigation of the relationship between photorefractive and two-beam coupling response times

Abstract

Quantitative dependences of two-beam coupling and hologram buildup time constants normalized by the photorefractive response time on a beam coupling gain and a pump-to-probe intensity ratio are investigated experimentally. We show that these normalized time constants increase with an increase of the beam coupling gain when the pump depletion can be negligible. However, they decrease and can be comparable to or less than unity in the strongly depleted pump regime. Numerical simulations also support these experimental results.