[time-nuts] optically excite a quartz crystal?

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <AABKXJBN5AJ3WCZA at smtpout04.dca.untd.com>, cdelect at juno.com writes:
>After reading about how the BVA oscillators avoid the problems of "on
>crystal" electrodes I was wondering if anyone has tried to optically
>excite a quartz crystal in an oscillator?

I can see optical detection, but I have a hard time imagining how you
would excite it opticaly ?

You can obviously hammer it with a wavelength quartz absorbs, but that
turns into heat and I somewhat doubt you can get a heat/cooling cycle
to run at 10 MHz, even in perfect quartz ?

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