Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Factors affecting the efficiency in four-wave mixing of pulsed CO2 laser radiation in sulfur hexafluoride
Wolfgang Riede, Thomas Hall, Hans H. Klingenberg
Abstract
An investigation was made determining the parameters affecting the phase conjugate reflectivity in a four-wave mixing scheme using a pulsed TEA CO2 laser and gaseous sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) as the nonlinear medium. With a low energy CO2 laser (60 mJ pulse energy) an optimum energy reflectivity of 20 % was achieved at a pump-probe angle of 30 mrad, a SF6 pressure of 50 hPa at the lOiim P(1O) laser transition for exactly aligned counterpropagating pump waves. In addition, the reflectivity showed a substructure when enlarging the angular mismatch between the pump waves. A simulation of the phase conjugate intensity distribution was carried out solving the Kirchhoff- Fresnel integral equation.