This investigation represents a deep and advanced analysis of exploiting lithium niobate (LiNbO3) crystals for the collinear acousto-optical tunable filter (AOTF) in violet and near ultraviolet ranges. The selection of this material is motivated by its high birefringence, which is a key parameter for improving the resolution of AOTF. For this matter, we take into account all the important factors that can deteriorate the resolution in order to find extreme conditions for the best performances. In concrete, we analyze the well- known photorefraction effect accompanied by the light induced absorption in those ranges for the LiNbO3 crystals doped by selected materials. The best observed results have been obtained with magnesium (Mg) dopant in the congruent melt of LiNbO3, which also shifts the absorption edge far into the middle UV-range. This analysis had made it possible to formulate the physical criterion determining the enlarged practical limitations of the incident light power density. Together with previously studied non-uniformity and dispersion of the birefringence along the length of acousto-optical interaction in a crystal, we exploit the recently discovered and experimentally confirmed acousto-optical nonlinearity, which can improve the transmission function inherent in the collinear interaction via applying the acoustic waves of finite amplitude in the AOTF. As a result, the obtained spectral resolution is the best available for any collinear AOTF to our knowledge.

Date Published: 27 February 2015
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9347, Nonlinear Frequency Generation and Conversion: Materials, Devices, and Applications XIV, 93470E (27 February 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2077856

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9347:
Nonlinear Frequency Generation and Conversion: Materials, Devices, and Applications XIV
Konstantin L. Vodopyanov, Editor(s)