High-speed photorefractive polymer composites

Abstract

Two photorefractive polymercomposites are presented that exhibit the fastest response times reported to date by an order of magnitude (τ g ≈5 ms at 1 W/cm 2 ), while maintaining large gain coefficients (Γ≈230 and 130 cm −1 ). These materials show promise for video-rate optical processing applications. The factors limiting the photorefractive speed in these materials are investigated.