Investigation of photoinduced scattering in LiNbO3 crystals

A photoinduced scattering effect in LiNbO₃:Fe crystals was investigated in detail. The scattering depends substantially on illumination geometry, light beam profile, doping degree, and appears under coherent illumination only. It was shown that besides the photoinduced scattering a bleaching effect is possible. It consists in the fact that after the stage of low-scale inhomogeneity formation there occurs their effective erasure. The conditions were found out under which the bleaching effect can be observed.