The threshold effect of incident exposure energy flux for photorefractive light-induced scattering in doped lithium niobate crystals

The threshold effect of incident exposure energy flux is proposed to measure the light-induced scattering in doped LiNbO3 crystals. The dependences of the exposure energy flux threshold on the concentration of damage-resistant dopants as well as oxidation–reduction treatment are investigated experimentally in doped LiNbO3 crystals. The results show that doping with damage-resistant dopants and oxidation–reduction treatment are simple and effective methods to control and optimize the photorefractive properties of doped LiNbO3 crystals. The high signal-to-noise ratio reconstructions are also demonstrated experimentally according to the incident exposure energy flux threshold in triply-doped LiNbO3 crystals. Comparing with the known incident intensity threshold method, the exposure energy flux threshold method is more effective for estimating the light-induced scattering of photorefractive recording materials.