Real-time monitoring in fabrication of PPKTP crystals utilizing electro-optical effect

Abstract

Compared with other nonlinear optical materials, KTP crystals have prominent advantages. However, they also have a high conductivity and become difficult to efficiently control domain-reverse with the conventional method, due to the existence of ionic current. To conquer the difficulty, it is necessary to monitor the polarization-reversal process of KTP crystals in real time. The real-time monitoring method in the fabrication of PPKTP, short for periodically-poled KTiOPO₄, is carried out by utilizing electro-optical effect. The principle is analyzed theoretically and the result demonstrates the validity of the method experimentally. Compared with the result without using the monitoring method, the conversion efficiency of PPKTP crystal increases by many times. It is proved that this method can be used to enhance the quality and repeatability of PPKTP fabrication, and is also effective to examine the quality of PPKTP crystals.

Keywords

nonlinear optics / quasi-phase matching (QPM) / periodically poled KTP (PPKTP) / electro-optical effect (EO effect) / real-time monitoring