Authors: GK Kitaeva KA Kuznetsov VF Morozova II Naumova AN Penin AV Shepelev AV Viskovatich DM Zhigunov
Publish Date: 2004/04/01
Volume: 78, Issue: 6, Pages: 759-764
Abstract
We studied the visible and IR dispersion of absorption coefficient and refractive index for congruent LiNbO3 and MgLiNbO3 crystals before and after chemical reduction at different annealing temperatures The concentration of Mg in MgLiNbO3 samples was just below or above the photorefractive threshold The reductioninduced changes in the absorption coefficient reveal the formation of polarons typical for doped LiNbO3 crystals It was shown that the polaron concentration is maximal when the Mg concentration is just below the photorefractive threshold and the annealing temperature is near 500 °C This temperature is optimal for the most efficient polaron formation at all considered concentrations of Mg The fitting of the experimental absorption dispersion curves indicates that intermediate polarons are formed in LiNbO3Mg crystals preferably The spectral dependence of transmission for samples of lithium niobate of various thicknesses was studied The results indicate that there are spatial regions with much greater absorption than that of bulk crystals We assume that in general polarons are localized in thin nearsurface regions The spectral dependence of the refractive index in the vicinity of the phonon absorption edge indicates some essential changes of the phonon subsystem taking place after reduction The infrared contribution into the dispersion of the dielectric function real part increases considerably after reduction
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