Effect of external electric field and background illumination on the intensity distribution of optical surface waves in the metal – photorefractive crystal system

The influence of the external electric field and background illumination on the intensity distribution of optical photorefractive surface waves at the metal – photorefractive crystal interface has been numerically simulated. The simulation is performed for a strontium – barium niobate (SBN) crystal using the parameters corresponding to the experimental data. The replacement of a real metal with an ideal one and the choice of the corresponding boundary conditions (depending on the wave power) in the numerical simulation have been substantiated. The calculation results have shown good agreement with the previously published experimental data on the effect of background illumination and a significant discrepancy for the data on the effect of the external electric field. It is found that the effect of the external electric field can be significantly enhanced by reducing the optical power of the photorefractive wave to values close to the threshold ones.