Speed of the photorefractive effect in a BaTiO3 single crystal

We present data on the speed of light‐induced refractive index changes in a BaTiO3 single crystal. The light‐induced erasure rate of a refractive index grating is shown to depend on optical intensity as I x where x<1. The exponent x depends weakly on temperature and increases from 0.62±0.02 to 0.71±0.02 when the temperature is varied between 12 and 40 °C. The sublinear dependence of rate on intensity implies that higher optical intensity is required to achieve high‐speed operation of BaTiO3 devices than previously thought. The dark erasure rate has an anomolously strong temperature dependence; it increases by a factor of 50 over the same temperature range. We have also determined that the number density of photorefractive charge carriers is 6×1016 cm−3 in this crystal.