Photorefractive solitons and light-induced resonance control in semiconductor CdZnTe

Summary form only given. We demonstrate the formation of (1 + 1)D and of (2 + 1)D solitons in the photorefractive semiconductor CdZnTe:V, and show how to optically control the resonance intensity, which facilitates microseconds formation times at very low optical power. CdZnTe:V has a similar intensity-resonant mechanism as InP:Fe, with an important difference: the electrons and the holes exchange roles. Electrons are optically excited by a 1.3 /spl mu/m (or shorter) wavelength, whereas holes are thermally excited. However, the holes can also be excited optically, by a /spl sim/1.5 /spl mu/m wavelength beam. Here, we take advantage of this property to increase (and control) the hole excitation rate considerably by uniformly illuminating the crystal with a 1.48 /spl mu/m wavelength beam (the "background beam"). This background beam sets the resonance intensity to much higher values than temperature-driven resonance, thereby shortening their formation time to 10 microsecond with soliton intensity of /spl sim/20 W/cm/sup 2/ and background intensity of /spl sim/1 W/cm/sup 2/.