Abstract

In bulk photorefractive materials, probe beams erase the photorefractive gratings written by pump lasers. In multilayer structures grown by molecular beam epitaxy, on the other hand, the photoconductivity of the probe beam can be spatially isolated from the regions where the photorefractive gratings are developed. Under these conditions, the photoconductivity of the probe beam cannot easily erase the photorefractive gratings, and probe-beam intensities more than an order of magnitude larger than the pump-beam intensities are possible.

© 1991 Optical Society of America