| Abstract Scope |
Electro-optic materials are critical to modern telecommunications, as they can manipulate the flow of light by means of electric fields. Surprisingly, theoretical tools have not been widely used to find new materials with enhanced electro-optic responses compared to standard lithium niobate. This is due, in part, to the lack of models able to describe both the linear and quadratic electro-optic response at finite temperature and in a large spectral domain ranging from the far infrared to the visible, at the atomistic scale. Here, we show how Density Functional Theory coupled with effective Hamiltonian techniques can help recover the finite temperature linear and quadratic electro-optic response of classical ferroelectrics, while reconciling previous paradoxical reports on the nature of the electro-optic effect at different wavelengths in, for instance, barium titanate. |