PICOSECOND 2-BEAM COUPLING AND POLARIZATION ROTATION BY SCALAR GRATINGS IN UNDOPED CADMIUM TELLURIDE AT 1.064 MU-M

We report on the observation of a photorefractive effect with picosecond pulses in a material that has little or no midgap absorption (less than 0.1 cm-1). We model our data using rate equations for the material and the wave equation for the optical fields. Additional measurements on the sample include attempts at continuous-wave beam coupling, probe transmission in the presence of a cross-polarized pump, and beam coupling through a scalar grating (free-carrier nonlinearity) of a probe and a pump at an arbitrary polarization.