Recent highly sensitive absorption measurements of lithium niobate (LiNbO3) show that within the spectral range between 500 and 2900 nm the transparency is limited by impurities such as iron or hydrogen. In order to reduce the residual absorption, 5-mol.-%-MgO-doped and undoped congruent as well as undoped stoichiometric LiNbO3 crystals are annealed in dry oxygen atmosphere. The extinction coefficient of the treated crystals is measured using whispering-gallery-resonator-based absorption spectroscopy. The conducted measurements show that the treatment of stoichiometric crystals leads to scattering centers. For the congruent material residual metallic ions like iron and copper dominate the absorption in the spectral region from 400-2000 nm, and oxidization only shifts the center of the absorption in our case from that of iron to that of copper, thus inhibiting reaching the theoretical loss limit. Nevertheless, starting from 2000 nm, where absorption caused by hydrogen dominates, annealing leads to a significant drop in absorption, narrowing here the gap to the theoretical loss limit. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America

We show experimentally and prove theoretically that the pump-power thresholds of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in lithium-niobate-based whispering gallery resonators (WGRs) are strongly different for the signal waves propagating in the backward and forward directions with respect to the pump wave. This feature is due to a strong polaritonic effect. It leads to a cascade of alternating forward-backward Raman lines with increasing pump power. The measured polarization and spectral properties of SRS are in good agreement with theory. Similar properties have to be inherent in other WGRs made of polar crystals.

Whispering-gallery resonators made of undoped and MgO-doped congruently grown lithium niobate are used to study electro-optic refractive index changes. Hereby, we focus on the volume photovoltaic and the pyroelectric effect, both providing an electric field driving the electro-optic effect. Our findings indicate that the light-induced photorefractive effect, combining the photovoltaic and electro-optic effect, is present only in the non-MgO-doped lithium niobate for exposure with light having wavelengths of up to 850 nm. This leads to strong resonance frequency shifts of the whispering-gallery modes. No photorefractive effect was observed in the MgO-doped material. One has to be aware that surface charges induced by the pyroelectric effect result in a similar phenomenon and are present in both materials.

We employ three highly sensitive spectrometers: a photoacoustic spectrometer, a photothermal common-path interferometer and a whispering-gallery-resonator-based absorption spectrometer, for a comparative study of measuring the absorption coefficient of nominally transparent undoped, congruently grown lithium niobate for ordinarily and extraordinarily polarized light in the wavelength range from 390 to 3800 nm. The absorption coefficient ranges from below 10(-4) cm(-1) up to 2 cm(-1). Furthermore, we measure the absorption at the Urbach tail as well as the multiphonon edge of the material by a standard grating spectrometer and a Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer, providing for the first time an absorption spectrum of the whole transparency window of lithium niobate. The absorption coefficients obtained by the three highly sensitive and independent methods show good agreement.

The absorption coefficient of undoped, congruently grown lithium niobate (LiNbO3) for ordinarily and extraordinarily polarized light is measured in the wavelength range from 390 to 2600 nm using whispering gallery resonators (WGRs). These monolithic cavities guide light by total internal reflection. Their high Q-factor provides several hundred meters of propagation for the coupled light in millimetre size resonators allowing for the measurement of absorption coefficients below 10(-2) cm(-1), where standard methods such as Fourier-transform or grating spectroscopy meet their limit. In this work the lowest measured value is 10(-4) cm(-1) at 1700 nm wavelength. Furthermore, the known OH overtone at 1470 nm wavelength can be resolved clearly.

We report the observation and the study of an additional shift current tensor element in (110)-oriented GaAs quantum wells, which arises from an out-of-plane asymmetry of the quantum well structure. The current resulting from this tensor element is optically induced with 150 fs laser pulses and detected by measuring the simultaneously emitted terahertz radiation. This terahertz spectroscopy of shift currents is a powerful technique for symmetry investigations, which shows, for example, that our nominally symmetric (110)-oriented GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells grown by molecular beam epitaxy are in reality asymmetric structures with different right and left interfaces.