Research On The Electro-Induced Birefringence In Bulk Crystal Silicon

In this paper, the electro-induced birefringence based on Kerr effect and Franz-Keldysh effect in bulk silicon crystal at 1.3 mu m wavelengths has been measured, and the element of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility tensor, (3) chi((3))(xyxy), has been calculated. We find the change of refractive index induced by Franz-Keldysh effect is dependent on the polarization of the probing beam. Moreover, we deduce that the silicon crystal will become a single-axis crystal from an isotropy crystal when a silicon crystal is biased along [111] crystallographic direction, and the phenomena of birefringence will occur as long as the light propagate perpendicularly to the optical axis of silicon crystal. In the experiment, we deduced the differences of refractive indices induced by Kerr effect and Franz-Keldysh effect were Delta n = 5.49 x 10(-16) E-0(2) and Delta n(/) = 2.42 x 10(-16) E-0(2.5) respectively.