This review volume presents new developments in the preparation, physical characterization and applications of insulating materials for Optoelectronics. Insulators occupy a leading position as laser and optical amplifier hosts, electrooptic and acoustooptic modulators, frequency doublers and optical parametric oscillators, photorefractive devices and radiator detectors. These applications rely heavily on the development of advanced techniques for the preparation of both bulk and waveguide structures, the adequate knowledge of the microscopic behaviour defects, impurities and a thorough understanding of their response to electromagnetic fields. All these topics relating basic physicochemical aspects and applied performance are authoritatively discussed in the book.

This book presents the principles of non-linear integrated optics. The first objective is to provide the reader with a thorough understanding of integrated optics so that they may be able to develop the theoretical and experimental tools to study and control the linear and non-linear optical properties of waveguides. The potential use of these structures can then be determined in order to realize integrated optical components for light modulation and generation. The theoretical models are accompanied by experimental tools and their setting in order to characterize the studied phenomenon. The passage from theory to practice makes the comprehension of the physical phenomena simple and didactic. The book also gives a presentation of the industrial applications of the integrated optical components. The studied topics range from the theory of waveguides and the linear and non-linear optical characterization techniques to photonic crystals. This last field constitutes a major challenge of photonic technologies of the 21st century.

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The book addresses many problems of ion exchange processes in LiNbO3, LiTaO3 and KTiOPO4 ferroelectrics and II-VI semiconductor single crystals for integrated optics applications. The authors start with the fundamentals of ion exchange processes in solids (Chapter 1). Chapter 1 can be considered also as an enlarged introduction to the book. Starting with Chapter 2, the general properties of LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 crystals, the methods used to study optical waveguides in these crystals as well as advanced preparation methods of optical waveguides are reviewed. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are devoted to recent progress in the ion exchange processes in LiNbO3, LiTaO3 and KTiOPO4 crystals, respectively, and Chapter 6 summarizes the main applications of ion-exchanged waveguides in modern integrated optics. Finally, Chapter 7 deals with recently established ion exchange processes in II-VI semiconductors.

Laser ablation describes the interaction of intense optical fields with matter, in which atoms are selectively driven off by thermal or nonthermal mechanisms. This is the first book that combines the most recent results in this rapidly advancing field with authoritative treatment of laser ablation and its applications, including the physics of high-power laser-matter interaction.

This second volume of the series on photorefractive effects focuses on the most recent developments in the field and highlights the parameters which govern the photoinduced nonlinearity. Besides reviewing conventional electro-optic crystals, this book deals with organic photorefractive materials, giving an in-depth assessment of the present understanding of the effect in a variety of materials. The materials considered in this volume will play a significant role in the development of applications such as presented in the third volume.