The phase conjugate (PC) mirror system consisting of a rod amplifier and a nonlinear medium is presented and the theoretical analysis of the enhanced PC wave in the system is derived by taking into account of the overlap of the probe and counterpropagating PC wave in the amplifier. In order to examine experimentally the enhanced PC reflectivity in degenerate four wave mixing (DFWM) an amplifier is placed in the probe beam path. Experimental result of maximal R/R 90. 25 is obtained where R and R are PC reflectivities in the absence and presence of the amplifier respectively. The experimental results agree within 5 with the theoretical values. 1. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS Schematic digram of the PC mirror system consisting of an amplifier and a nonlinear medium is shown in Fig. 1. The phase distortion 4 is due to several effects such as inhomogemous pumping stress gain saturation thermal leasing and self-focusing/defocusing in the amplifier. 1 The amplifier is palced near the nonlinear medium so that the changes in phase (4) and gain (g) are negligible during the round trip time. Considering phase conjugation at the nonlinear medium the output signal SA8 over the input probe bA. is expressed as 8A ge+/ (ge14''A) J where R is PC reflectivity of nonlinear medium. There is no phase distortion term in output signal. Thus we obtain the following expression for the signal 6M photons/ 2
The phase conjugate (PC) mirror system consisting of a rod amplifier and a nonlinear medium is presented and the theoretical analysis of the enhanced PC wave in the system is derived by taking into account of the overlap of the probe and counterpropagating PC wave in the amplifier. In order to examine experimentally the enhanced PC reflectivity in degenerate four wave mixing (DFWM) an amplifier is placed in the probe beam path. Experimental result of maximal R/R 90. 25 is obtained where R and R are PC reflectivities in the absence and presence of the amplifier respectively. The experimental results agree within 5 with the theoretical values. 1. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS Schematic digram of the PC mirror system consisting of an amplifier and a nonlinear medium is shown in Fig. 1. The phase distortion 4 is due to several effects such as inhomogemous pumping stress gain saturation thermal leasing and self-focusing/defocusing in the amplifier. 1 The amplifier is palced near the nonlinear medium so that the changes in phase (4) and gain (g) are negligible during the round trip time. Considering phase conjugation at the nonlinear medium the output signal SA8 over the input probe bA. is expressed as 8A ge+/ (ge14''A) J where R is PC reflectivity of nonlinear medium. There is no phase distortion term in output signal. Thus we obtain the following expression for the signal 6M photons/ 2
A calculation procedure and various large-signal and numerical solutions are presented for degenerate four-wave mixing in optical Kerr media, and for phase conjugate resonators using degenerate four-wave mixing. The solutions presented take full account of nonlinear refractive index changes, pump depletion, signal saturation, distributed losses, and possible external mirrors with laser gain. We find that including the nonlinear index change generally causes little change in the reflectivity or power output of degenerate four-wave mixing devices, at least with symmetric pumping. The optimum power output from a phase conjugate resonator with and without a laser gain medium is calculated. The results provide some theoretical guidance for designing phase conjugate resonators.
PACS Code 42. 65. Bp; 42. 60. Da
Phase conjugation (PC) processes at degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) in the active medium of a pulsed e-beam controlled discharge CO2-laser were studied both experimentally and theoretically. The experiment was carried out with the following parameters: laser gas mixture CO2:N2:He=1:2:4, gas pressure 0.3 bar, active medium length 1.2 m, resonator length 12 m (17.7 m for single line laser), interaction angle ~10 mrad at DFWM without optical delay between probe wave and co-propagating pump one. Integral PC reflectivity (PCR) strongly depends on such parameters as: specific input energy (Fig. 1); intensity ratio for probe J3 and co-propagating pump J1 wave (Fig.2); coherency of the laser radiation, that varied by rotation of mutual polarization or with optical delay between probe wave and co-propagating pump one; geometry of DFWM; output mirror reflectance Rout (8-80%) (PCR was maximum with Rout of 8% but best quality of PC signal was observed with Rout =80%); gas mixture composition and pressure, being maximum for a mixture with a low fraction of helium and at higher pressure (up to 0.6 bar). A periodical dependence of PCR on optical delay between probe and co-propagating pump wave with periods 10−3 and 10−5 m was observed. The PCR did not depend on spectral content and a degree of linear polarization of the laser radiation.
We present a theoretical study of phase-conjugate (PC) emission by backward degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) processes in a resonant gas medium. In this study, high-intensity (pump) saturation and Doppler broadening are simultaneously taken into account. We develop a general formalism to deal with the saturation effects in the case of a three-level atom (with degenerate frequencies) and obtain analytical expressions of the PC field amplitude (after integration over the velocity distribution) under the following conditions: (1) the probe beam and one of the pump beams have intensities weak enough to be treated at the lowest perturbation order, whereas the other pump intensity is arbitrarily high; (2) the probe crosses the standing pump wave at grazing incidence. It is shown that the saturation induced by the forward pump (copropagating with the probe beam) leads to entirely different behavior of the nonlinear susceptibility from that induced by the backward pump (counterpropagating with the probe beam). This saturation anisotropy is specific to the inhomogeneous broadening of the gas medium, which is also responsible for the frequency splitting experimentally observed in the intensity line shape of the PC emission for large pump intensities. At saturation, this splitting is theoretically shown to be proportional to the Rabi frequency, with a proportionality coefficient critically dependent on the relaxation processes; in the case of a single-relaxation model, the splitting is equal to 1.5 times the Rabi frequency. The PC intensity line shape is demonstrated to be of dispersive origin in the case of backward saturation, whereas for forward saturation, narrow structures are predicted in both real and imaginary parts of the nonlinear susceptibility, also leading to the intensity line-shape splitting. One also finds that the reflectivity of PC mirrors based on resonant DFWM strongly depends on the origin of the saturation. For a saturating forward pump, the PC emission intensity tends toward zero with increasing pump intensities, and it reaches a finite (nonzero) limit in the case of backward saturation. Most of these predictions have been observed experimentally [ BlochD., Phys. Rev. Lett.49, 719 ( 1982)].
A theoretical analysis is made of the efficiency of typical ring systems of phase-conjugating mirrors utilizing a degenerate four-wave interaction in media with a thermal nonlinearity. The analysis is made for steady-state conditions taking into account wave saturation effects in an amplifier situated in a positive feedback circuit. It is shown that the reflection coefficient in these systems is extremely sensitive to the level of the phase-conjugate signal (as the ratio of the signal intensity to the saturation intensity of the amplifier active medium is increased, the reflection coefficient of the ring phase-conjugating mirror decreases sharply). It is also found that at a high level of the nonlinearity and for an appreciable gain per pass, these systems exhibit multistability (i.e., several different steady states exist).
Phase distortion correction of an optical wave propagating in laser media is a crucial problem to be taken into account in most of laser systems. For this purpose, phase conjugation through stimulated Brillouin scattering using the master oscillator-power amplification configuration has shown a very good potential to obtain high beam quality in solid-state lasers that operate at variable repetition rates. Another attractive alternative to generate the phase-conjugate wavefronts is to use a four-wave mixing (DFWM) process in the laser amplifier. In this medium, the interference between the interacting beams leads to a spatial modulation of the complex susceptibility of the medium by gain saturation (amplitude gain grating). This all-solid-state solution presents the advantage of suppressing the external nonlinear medium and would realize the required functions in the laser medium itself. Moreover, due to the amplification experienced by all the interacting beams, associated to the resonant nonlinearity of the gain saturation, high reflectivities already have been achieved in Nd:YAG amplifiers using a multipass geometry.1,2
We have developed a theory for nondegenerate oscillations in optical resonators containing an intracavity phase-conjugate element. The phase-conjugate element consists of a nonlinear transparent medium that is pumped externally by a pair of counterpropagating laser beams of the same frequency and intensity. Phase conjugation of an input beam of slightly different frequency occurs because of nondegenerate four-wave mixing. The theory takes into account linear absorption (or gain) in the medium and is applied to study the threshold behavior of phase-conjugate oscillators. For the special case of no conventional mirrors, the phase-conjugate oscillator reduces to an ordinary phase-conjugate mirror, and our general formulation yields the results of previous studies. Our analysis shows that the parametric gain required for oscillation increases (or decreases) as a result of linear absorption (or gain) in the medium, and oscillation can occur at a frequency different from that of the pump beams in the presence of large linear gain (or loss). The effects of linear absorption (or gain) on the filter operation are also examined.