Quality of incident-wave reflection by a four-wave phase-conjugate mirror

Arturo A. Jacobs, Wayne R. Tompkin, Robert W. Boyd +1 more

The nature of the fringe pattern produced by interference between a wave incident upon a phase-conjugate mirror and that leaving the mirror has been studied experimentally for a phase-conjugate mirror based on degenerate four-wave mixing. The fringe locations are found to depend on the phase of the wave incident upon the mirror, in agreement with recent theoretical predictions but in contrast to the results observed for the interference pattern produced on reflection at an ordinary metal mirror. The phases of the waves that pump the phase-conjugate mirror are shown to provide the reference with respect to which the phase of the incident wave is determined.

Valery V. Ivakhnik, E. G. Martasova, В. И. Никонов

Brian Vohnsen, Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi

Z. Y. Ou, Samir Bali, L. Mandeļ

The response of a phase-conjugate mirror (PCM) based on nondegenerate four-wave mixing to an incident photon wave packet has been calculated. In the monochromatic limit the phase-compensating property of the PCM, which makes the response independent of optical path length, is recovered. However, for a photon wave packet of nonzero bandwidth, the response of the PCM varies in a fairly complicated manner with the wave-packet length. In particular, the length of the pulse reflected from the PCM becomes independent of the length of the incident pulse for sufficiently short pulses.

I. Lindsay, John Christopher Dainty

P. D. Drummond, Ari T. Friberg

An ordinary mirror placed in front of a phase-conjugate mirror forms a type of Fabry–Perot interferometer with unusual reflection properties. The specularly reflected and phase-conjugate reflected intensities are analyzed for arbitrary reflection coefficients, given an incident monochromatic linearly polarized plane wave. It is shown that if the ordinary mirror is lossless and the phase-conjugate reflectivity is unity, the specularly reflected wave disappears completely. This leaves only the phase-conjugate reflected wave that propagates in the direction opposite to that of the incident wave. The above result is independent of the reflectivity of the ordinary mirror and the separation between the two interferometer mirrors. Some of the main effects due to absorption in the ordinary mirror are briefly discussed.