The behaviour of phase conjugated waves produced by degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) at 488.0 and 514.5 nm of laser beams in ruby crystals has been examined at large pulsed pump beam intensities and enhanced reflectivities observed.
Degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) is a simple method to achieve phase conjugation. It uses the third-order nonlinearity of the electric susceptibility to produce changes in the optical properties of materials. A dynamic grating is then induced. Such gratings might be used as fast optical memories in optical computing. Our aim is to find media with large nonlinear susceptibilities and fast response time. We report phase conjugation of 532-nm laser radiation by DFWM in dye solutions. The time dependence of the conjugated wave is investigated experimentally and compared to theoretical predictions. We have also studied the influence of the solvents, dye concentration, and pump intensity on the phase conjugated signal. The results are compared with those predicted by three nonlinear mechanisms. Thermally induced refractive-index changes, Kerr effect, and saturable absorption are considered.
The work reported here demonstrates for the first time degenerate four wave mixing (DFWM) phase conjugation in cesium (Cs) atomic vapor. The strong, spectrally narrow transition of cesium at 852 nm gives conjugate reflectivities up to 154% with low pump beam powers. Temperature tuning of the DFWM response over a 30 GHz bandwidth is also demonstrated. An improved experimental design to determine the DFWM angular response shows a field-of-view of 20 mrad at the half response points. Self-focusing effects are observed to be similar to those in sodium vapor with an onset of increased conjugate divergence for reflectivities greater than about 25%.
The transient behavior of degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) in a three-level saturable absorber is analyzed and verified experimentally. A sharp peak of phase-conjugated reflectivity is predicted and observed at high pump intensities for pulsed beams. The influence of the time-dependent behavior of the conjugate wave signal on results of pulsed-beam experiments is studied. It is shown that transient effects could account for discrepancies between previous experimental results and steady-state theory.
Both backward and forward phase conjugate waves have been observed indegenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) in a LiNbO 3 :Fe crystalline slab. Investigation shows that the observed forward phase conjugate wave consists of two main contributions. The dominant contribution is the phase conjugate wave of the reflected signal beam. The other contribution arises from the reflection of backward phase conjugate wave at the front surface of the crystal. The intensity of the forward phase conjugate wave is comparable with that of the backward phase conjugate wave.
In this paper, frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser's phase conjugation has been investigated experimentally using resonant degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM). The iodine solution was used as resonant medium. In this way, the energy of the DFWM phase conjugation beam arrived at 43μJ/pulse while the total pump beam's energy reached 8mJ/pulse. The relation between the pulse energy of the DFWM phase conjugation beam and that of the pump beam was investigated. We also measured the optical field distributions of pump beam and DFWM phase conjugation beam, from which it can be noticed that the DFWM phase conjugation can improve the laser beam quality. At the same time, we observed the influence of the pump beam's disturbance on the DFWM signal.
The theory of phase conjugation in laser amplifiers by saturable-gain degenerate four-wave mixing with copolarized beams is developed for pulses of arbitrary temporal shape and duration in the limit of a weak signal beam. The influence of the input pulse’s characteristics (energy, temporal pulse shape, duration) on the phase-conjugate reflectivity and on the conjugate pulse shape is analyzed. A sharp instantaneous peak of phase-conjugate reflectivity is predicted at high intensities of the four-wave mixing beams. This effect is experimentally demonstrated at λ0 = 1064 nm in a Nd:YVO4 amplifier pumped by a cw Ti:sapphire laser. A transient peak reflectivity of R ∼ 50% is thus obtained, corresponding to an enhancement of 1.6× compared with the maximum steady-state reflectivity. The experimental results and the theoretical predictions are in good agreement.