Electrical control in photoferroelectric materials for optical storage.

After defining photoferroelectrics as photosensitive and nonlinear electrooptic materials, we report electrical control of holographic diffraction efficiency in PLZT ceramics and electrical fixation and erasure of holograms recorded in SBN single crystals. On the basis of experimental data, these effects are explained in terms of the local field amplitude, computed as the sum of the applied field and the photoinduced space charge field and high nonlinear electrooptic effects associated with ferroelectric phase transitions.