Nondestructive characterization of periodically poled lithium niobate crystals by measuring noise in diffraction pattern

Abstract

Domain randomness is inherent in the fabrication of periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN). The main cause of such domain randomness in fabrication of PPLN is due to electric poling process. This domain randomness not only impacts the effectiveness of frequency conversion, but also enhances the effectiveness of nonphase matched parasitic processes, which in many cases limits the performance of the device. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate a nondestructive characterization of domain randomness in PPLN by diffraction-noise pattern with uniform illumination. We measure the domain randomness of PPLN and provide an effective method for poling quality assessment either as good or poor quality of PPLN through this paper.