A model of photoinduced anisotropy in chalcogenide glasses

Abstract An electronic model of photoinduced optical anisotropy (PA) is suggested. Within the framework of this model, PA is attributed to photogeneration and trapping of oriented geminate electron–hole pairs. This attribution is possible in a disordered material with appropriately correlated traps, illuminated by polarized light that can generate aligned geminate pairs. Since creation of stable oriented geminate pairs occurs in the dispersive transport regime, the PA build-up can be fitted with a stretched-exponential time dependence.