Identification of defects associated with second-order optical nonlinearity in thermally poled high-purity silica glasses

摘要

A large second-order optical nonlinearity has been found to be generated in various kinds of silica glasses in which an even-order optical nonlinearity is inherently prohibited. Thermal poling is a typical procedure to generate such a second-order optical nonlinearity, but a mechanism behind the generation is not elucidated completely. It should be pointed out, however, that the nonlinearity was not added to high-purity silica glasses by poling. In this article, we show that the nonlinearity is generated in high-purity silica glasses irradiated by a KrF excimer laser before poling. We also show that the laser pulses erase the nonlinearity induced in the glasses. In addition to the laser irradiation effects on the generation and erasure, optical absorption and luminescence spectra in the glasses show that point defects of =Si-O- play a key role for the nonlinearity. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics. References: 23