Combined effects due to phase, intensity, and contrast in electrooptic modulation: application to ferroelectric materials

The combination of phase, intensity, and contrast effects during electrooptic modulation is theoretically and experimentally investigated. One consequence of this combination is the modification of the amplitude of the single-frequency signals which are commonly used as working points for electrooptic modulators and for the measurements of the electrooptic coefficients. Another consequence of direct intensity modulation is to shift the double-frequency points of the transfer function from the positions they normally occupy at the intensity extreme. They can even make them disappear if the direct intensity modulation is stronger than the phase modulation. Such phenomena are expected with any ferroelectric material in which a significant part of the incident light is deflected or scattered by domain walls or grain boundaries. They can lead to considerable mistakes in the determination of the electrooptic coefficients. Appropriate procedures to extract the different contributions are explained. Experimental results in rubidium hydrogen selenate are given, and consequences of the working of electrooptic modulators are discussed.