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High Temperature form BBO (
alpha-BBO) is a negative uniaxial crystal.
It has large birefringence over the broad transparent range from 189 nm
to 3500 nm. The physical, chemical, thermal and optical properties of
alpha-BBO crystal are similar to those of
beta-BBO.
There is no second order nonlinear effect in alpha-BBO crystal due to
the centric symmetry in its crystal structure and thus it has no use for
NLO processes. Instead, alpha-BBO is widely used for fabrication
of polarizers, phase retarders,
birefringent plates, especially those for UV
and high power operations. |
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