Holographic recording in photorefractive crystals with nonstationary and nonlinear photoconductivity

It is shown that holographic recording in photorefractive crystals made under the conditions of nonstationary and nonlinear photoconductivity is accompanied by nonmonotonic growth of hologram diffraction efficiency because of the specific features in the onset of steady state in an illuminated sample. An analysis of such phenomena observed earlier in sillenite crystals revealed that their interpretation, at least at a qualitative level, does not require invoking the concept of bipolar photoconductivity in these materials. Detailed description of the process of holographic recording occurring in the above conditions requires parallel studies of the photoconductivity kinetics observed in the sample under the same experimental conditions. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S1063-7834(99)01806-7].