Picosecond two-beam coupling and polarization rotation by scalar gratings in undoped cadmium telluride at 1.064 μm

We report on the observation of a photorefractive effect with picosecond pulses in a material that has little or no midgap absorption (less than 0.1 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\mathrm{-}1}$). We model our data using rate equations for the material and the wave equation for the optical fields. Additional measurements on the sample include attempts at continuous-wave beam coupling, probe transmission in the presence of a cross-polarized pump, and beam coupling through a scalar grating (free-carrier nonlinearity) of a probe and a pump at an arbitrary polarization.