Optical properties of borate crystals in terahertz region

In this paper we study the optical properties of a family of borate crystals comprising alpha and beta barium borates, barium fluoroborate, lithium triborate, and lithium tetraborate in the frequency range from 0.3 to 2.0 THz. We extract the refractive indices and absorption coefficients for both ordinary and extraordinary beams from terahertz time-domain spectroscopy data. All of the investigated crystals exhibit substantial birefringence and dichroism, which qualifies them as potential materials for terahertz polarization-optical devices. We also find an additional absorption band in barium borate crystals, which is not defined by the group of phonon modes lying above 2 THz. We argue that this phenomenon may be caused by excessive sodium atoms and ions in the crystal lattice.