title: Comparison of two-color hologram lifetimes of near-stoichiometric lithium niobate and of tantalate crystals.
abstract: Lifetimes of two-color nonvolatile holograms recorded in undoped or in slightly doped near-stoichiometric lithium niobate and tantalate crystals were measured and compared by extrapolation of the high-temperature data. A proton-compensation mechanism dominated the dark decay and yielded similar activation energies, of 1.05 and 1.10 eV, for near-stoichiometric lithium niobate and tantalate crystals, respectively. The lifetime of holograms in lithium tantalate was 1 order of magnitude longer than that in lithium niobate with the same proton concentration, which was consistent with our theoretical estimation. The projected lifetime of two-color holograms in lithium tantalate without observable OH-absorption is longer than 50 years.
authors.affiliation: Advanced Materials Laboratory, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan. liu.youwen@nims.go.jp
authors.forename: Youwen
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kitamura
authors.forename: Shunji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Takekawa
authors.forename: Ganesan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ravi
authors.forename: Masaru
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nakamura
authors.forename: Yasunori
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Furukawa
authors.forename: Hideki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hatano