<title>Optical damage resistance and transparency of MgO-doped LiTaO3 single crystals for SHG devices</title>

Abstract

Clear and transparent MgO doped LiTaO3 single crystals have been grown by the Czochralski method from a congruent melt. Their optical damage resistance has been characterized by measurement of the change of photoinduced birefringence. We compare the optical damage resistance of LiTaO3 and LiNbO3, each containing almost the same amount of Fe impurities (less than 1 ppm), and show that LiTaO3 has about 4 times lower optical damage resistance, which is not consistent with the data previously reported in the literature. On the other hand, MgO doped yielded an improvement in the optical damage resistance, as reported for MgO doped LiNbO3 crystals. The other important features of MgO doping are that: improved transparency spectra especially in a visible wavelength region, resulting in a change of color to clear and transparent from brown-yellow, and a shift in the absorption edge to shorter wavelengths of 270 nm. These are important advantages when considering shorter wavelength accessibility and high conversion efficiency in second harmonic generation devices.© (1993) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.