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Optically-induced refractive index inhomogeneities (optical damage) in LiTaO 3 are studied in terms of the variations of light extinction. A simple relation between the laser-induced natural birefringence and light extinction is presented. The effects of the melt stoichiometry, the poling procedures and the oxygen-annealing on the optical damage in LiTaO 3 are examined from the measurements of extinction ratios. Furthermore, the observation of the thermal decay of extinction ratio indicates that the thermal activation energy is 1.1∼1.3 eV based on the diffusion theory of Amodei. By an improved technique and treatments a LiTaO 3 crystal which is made resistant to optical damage by an Ar-ion laser (4880 Å) with power density as high as 14 kW/cm 2 is successfully obtained.
Tsuya et al. (1973) studied this question.