Monolithic bulk electro- and acousto-optic devices based on domain inverted ferroelectrics

Domain-inverted ferroelectrics are used to create monolithic bulk electro-optic (EO) and acousto-optic (AO) components, which in many respects outperform their classical counterparts. For example, we demonstrate that an EO Bragg-modulator based on superlattices reduces drive power by 70% and switching time by a factor of 5 compared with a conventional (single-domain) transverse EO retarder-modulator and AO Bragg cell, respectively. The same functional principle is used as an electrode-less optical sensor to detect electric fields, thus minimizing field distortions. In the AO domain, we report on a monolithic AOTF with a chirped superlattice which is designed to excite longitudinal acoustic waves over a frequency spectrum facilitating tunable filtering over the optical wavelength interval between 1300 nm and 1600 nm with a FWHM of 1.5 nm and 2.3 nm, respectively, and a maximum conversion efficiency of 43 %. An improvement of the relative conversion efficiency by more than 4 dB is achieved by a monolithic AOTF using acoustic shear waves instead of longitudinal waves. The drawback of increased sidelobes in the filter spectrum is believed to be overcome by a collinear beam AOTF.