Raman spectroscopy and luminescence of Ho-doped lithium niobate crystals
Résumé
Due to various excellent properties such as nonlinear optical, electro-optical,
piezoelectric, photorefractive ones Lithium Niobate (LN) is one of the most
used ferroelectrics having a wide number of applications such as frequency
doubling, phase-conjugation, holographic storage, SAW sensors.
Furthermore, the possibility of doping with rare-earth ions leads to laser
applications. Moreover, recently it has been shown that doping of LN with Ho3+
impurity ions leads to the essential reduction of optical damage at 532nm.
Raman spectroscopy is a important spectroscopic technique providing a
possibility to investigate physico-chemical, structural as well as optical
properties of materials under study. Polarized Raman measurements were
carried out on Ho-doped LN crystals with excitation wavelength of 532nm and
785nm. For measurements with green light in obtained Raman anti-Stokes
spectra expected modes were detected which obey the Raman selection rules.
In a contrast, Raman Stokes spectra are significantly different with comparison
to what one expects according to selection rules. Well defined additional
forbidden lines appeared having quite high intensity. It should be noted, that
the intensity of mentioned lines increases with an increase of Ho concentration
in the crystal. We attribute these to emission lines. So we can confirm that in
the same Stokes spectrum we were able with a good resolution to detect, the
transitions between the electronic states, and the vibrational states as well.
Currently we present the analysis of these data as function of Ho content in the
crystal, for the cases with different polarization and wavelengths of the incident
laser beam.