Light-induced scattering in photorefractive crystals

Light-induced scattering is an unwanted side effect in holographic experiments. To control this effect, we have started a program to understand the time development of light-induced scattering in a photorefractive crystal which contains impurities. Our aim is to obtain reliable numerical predictions for that process. In this paper, we work out the lowest order theory of the mechanism and formulate the basic differential equations. We measure the time development of the scattered radiation in LiNbO
3
:Fe in different directions and observe in several cases that the scattered wave is not amplified at saturation time (compared to the initial value), even for Re
\Gamma
> 0. This result is in accordance with the steady-state solution of our basic differential equations.