Photorefractive Materials and Their Applications 3

Abstract

The industry of optoelectronics, including optical memeory, optical communication, and optical information processing, has developed since the last century. Over the past decade, interest has grown in nonlinear optical materials allowing operations in real time on the phase and on the amplitude of coherent wavefronts. Such nonlinear interaction is a fascinate subject, with great promise for application to image distortion compensation, coherent image amplification, optical image filtering, and novel laser resonator design. Photorefractive materials are by far the most efficient nonlinear optical media for optical wave mixing and phase conjugation, which are indispensable for the realization of most of photonics applications. Among many kinds of photorefractive materials, mesogenic materials show a high diffraction efficiency and relatively fast response under a low operating voltage. The aim of the present chapter is to summarize the development of the photorefractive mesogenic composites and to demonstrate optical information processing using photorefractive mesogenic composites. © 2007 Springer.