INTERPRETATION OF THERMALLY-INDUCED OPTICALLY BISTABLE OSCILLATION

Multistability and bistable oscillation in the ferroelectric material PMN was found to be very sensitive to laser power, specimen temperatur e, ambient pressure and flow rate of air past the specimen (J. F. Scot t and T. Chen, Integrated Ferroelectrics, 1, 71(1992)). PMN has the po tential to make new photonic sensors due to its figure of merit (bette r, except for speed, than semiconductor materials such as ZnSe). In th is paper, an explanation of experimental results is given. The initial temperature dependence of the time behaviour of the transmitted light intensity and period between the switching events versus switching ev ent number have been obtained and are in qualitatively good agreement with the experimental results.