INDUCED OPTICAL ANISOTROPY IN PHOTOREFRACTIVE CRYSTALS

This paper reviews the results of studies of the photorefraction pheno menon carried out by the author or with his direct participation at th e S. I. Vavilov State Optical Institute over twenty-five years. The fe atures of photoinduced anisotropy in photorefractive crystals belongin g to various symmetry point groups are considered. The conditions for optimizing the display of the photorefractive effect and for using it to record images are presented. It is emphasized that local photoinduc ed anisotropy is related to the spatial structure of the fields of the volume photocharges in a crystal by complex nonlinear dependences who se form is determined by the crystal symmetry.