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Journal de Physique III

Noise reduction in photorefractive image amplifiers and applications

J.-P. Huignard, Henri J. Rajbenbach

Published Jul 1, 1993• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate two original methods for suppressing the beam fanning noise of photorefractive amplifiers. The first one involves two wave mixing in a slowly rotating crystal, while the second requires to tilt the crystal with respect to the recording beams. This method applies to materials which exhibit a sharp resonance of the gain versus the pump-probe beam angle. With both methods a large improvement of the S/N ratio is achieved and virtually noise free image amplifiers are demonstrated. In Bi12SiO20, subpicowatt optical signals are detected and amplified. By using combinations of LiNbO3/Bi12SiO20, as storage and amplification crystals respectively a long term readout (more than 20 hours) of a photorefractive memory is achieved.

DOI
10.1051/jp3:1993204

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We propose and experimentally demonstrate two original methods for suppressing the beam fanning noise of photorefractive amplifiers. The first one involves two wave mixing in a slowly rotating crystal, while the second requires to tilt the crystal with respect to the recording beams. This method applies to materials which exhibit a sharp resonance of the gain versus the pump-probe beam angle. With both methods a large improvement of the S/N ratio is achieved and virtually noise free image amplifiers are demonstrated. In Bi12SiO20, subpicowatt optical signals are detected and amplified. By using combinations of LiNbO3/Bi12SiO20, as storage and amplification crystals respectively a long term readout (more than 20 hours) of a photorefractive memory is achieved.
When a weak optical signal is injected in a photorefractive crystal illuminated with a strong pump beam, it experiences gain via a two-wave mixing process.(1) A problem common to these amplifiers is the presence of noise sources that corrupt the quality of the emerging amplified optical signal. We propose and experimentally demonstrate the first technique, to our knowledge, capable of very significantly reducing the optical noise while maintaining high gain coefficients. Consider two-wave mixing in a slowly rotating crystal. First, we estimate the influence of a crystal rotation (angular velocity Ω around the point O) on the noise intensity in the output plane (Fig. 1a). A noise source located around point A radiates a complex wavefront whose component along the direction of the injected signal is represented by a plane wave of intensity IN (A is a crystal imperfection or interface). It is essential to note that the noise sources are bounded to the crystal and will consequently move with it. This is the basis for the process of discrimination between the noise gratings and the injected signal grating. In the Ox coordinate bounded to the rotating crystal, the interference pattern responsible for the formation of a noise grating around the point A is given by: IN(x,t) = I0 [1 + mN cos KN(t)x], where KN(t) ~ 2π(θ + Ωt)/λ is the time-dependent grating wave vector (we have assumed that the angles inside the crystal are small), I0 is the total incident intensity (I0 ~ IP0), θ is the angle between the beams inside the crystal, λ = λ0/n is the optical wavelength in the crystal with refractive index n, and mN is the fringe modulation.
We propose and demonstrate a long-term readout photorefractive memory. It is made up of two photorefractive crystals: the first where the images are stored and the second where the signal is amplified by use of a low-noise self-bent pump-beam technique, making it possible to use very low illumination of the storage crystal. A LiNbO(3)/BaTiO(3) configuration is used with angular multiplexing; this technique permits continuous readout for more than 60 days. The long-term storage capacity and the maximum number of stored images are estimated.
We propose and demonstrate a new long-term readout holographic memory using two photorefractive crystals. Images are stored in the first crystal and reconstructed with low-intensity beams, then amplified in the second crystal operating in a high-gain low-noise configuration. By using combinations of LiNbO(3)/Bi(12)SiO(20) and BaTiO(3)/Bi(12)SiO(20) as storage/amplification crystals, continuous readout of the angularly coded memories for more than 20 h and 40 min, respectively, is experimentally achieved. A lower bound for the index modulation to be allocated to one stored image in LiNbO(3)is estimated.
Low noise image amplification owing to contradirectional two-wave mixing (CTWM) is proposed and demonstrated in Rh-doped BaTiO 3 crystal. Comparing with the conventional forward two-wave mixing scheme, an enhancement of signal-to-noise ratio in the order of 10 3 is obtained. The theoretical analyses are presented and give a reasonable explanation for the experimental results. The further discussion shows that CTWM scheme can also reduce the influence of the crystal absorption and crystal size on the two-wave mixing process to rise the signal beam gain.