Multi-wavelength simulations of the wavefront deformation of the optical wave passing through the domain patterns in ferroelectric single crystals

Abstract

The paper presents analysis of the wavefront deformations of the optical waves transmitted through the ferroelectric single crystals with particular types of domain patterns by means of the numerical simulations. It is known that domain patterns influence the macroscopic properties of ferroelectric polydomain single crystals to a great extent. It is known that the domain spacing in ferroelectric single crystals can span the range from few tenths of nanometers to centimeters. Finally, it is known that measurements of the wavefront deformation can serve as input data for tomographic methods. In this paper, we perform exact numerical computations of the wavefront deformations of the optical wave passing through the ferroelectric domain patterns for different wavelengths. The considered simulations methods are based on solving the wave equation for the electromagnetic field. The computed numerical results are compared with simple analytical estimates. The key result of the paper is the benchmark of the limits for the three-dimensional observations of the ferroelectric domain patterns using digital holographic tomography.