Threshold fluence for domain reversal directly induced by femtosecond laser in lithium niobate

Fabricating domain reversal directly induced by femtosecond laser is a novel and promising method to induce micron-period or even submicron-period inverted domain structure for it averts the domain spreading and mergence which is hard to avoid by traditional electric-field poling method. In this paper, the domain reversal process in lithium niobate crystal by irradiation of femtosecond pulses whose spatial and temporal distributions are taken into consideration is numerically simulated in the framework of Fahy's model. The simulation results manifest the domain inversion window theory and predict the threshold reversal fluence. The experiment to form domain reversal via direct illumination with femtosecond laser in Y-cut lithium niobate samples was conducted at room temperature. The multi-ring-like structures on the processed samples tally with the inversion window theory and the calculated threshold reversal fluence is well within the scope obtained by simulation, which serves as a corroborative evidence to prove the domain reversals can be formed by direct irradiation with femtosecond laser in lithium niobate.