Optical birefringence imaging of x-ray excited lithium tantalate

X-ray absorption in lithium tantalate induces large, long-lived (∼10−5 s) optical birefringence, visualized via scanning optical polarimetry. Similar birefringence measured from glass, sapphire, and quartz was two orders of magnitude weaker; much of this reduction can be accounted for by their small...

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Veröffentlicht in:APL photonics 2017-08, Vol.2 (8), p.086102-086102-7
Hauptverfasser: Durbin, S. M., Landcastle, A., DiChiara, A., Wen, Haidan, Walko, D., Adams, B.
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:X-ray absorption in lithium tantalate induces large, long-lived (∼10−5 s) optical birefringence, visualized via scanning optical polarimetry. Similar birefringence measured from glass, sapphire, and quartz was two orders of magnitude weaker; much of this reduction can be accounted for by their smaller cross section for x-ray absorption. While x-ray induced charges can perturb local refractive indices and lead to birefringence, aligned dipoles in the non-centrosymmetric unit cell of ferroelectric LiTaO3 create electric fields that also induce birefringence via electro-optic coupling, which shows up as a dependence on crystal orientation. Time-resolved measurements from LiTaO3 show a prompt response on a picosecond time scale, which along with the long decay time suggest novel opportunities for optical detection of x-rays.
ISSN:2378-0967
2378-0967
DOI:10.1063/1.4997414