Phase conjugation by a technique of spatial radiation filtering in a saturable absorber
V E Sherstobitov, Andrey Yu. Rodionov
To the best of our knowledge, a novel self-phase-conjugation technique for laser radiation is proposed, which is based on the self-filtration of the phase-conjugate component in a nonlinear absorbing medium, bleached by a pump wave with the intricate spatial structure in the region of location of its speckles. Similar to the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) case, the mechanism of the phase-conjugate wave discrimination against the noise background is based on the coincidence of the speckles in the pump and conjugate waves throughout the bulk of the medium. To compensate for a drop in the signal power due to total absorption, the amplification in conventional laser gain cells is used. The feasibility of the phase conjugation with reflectivities from unity to tens of percent is demonstrated by analytical estimates and numerical calculations. The technique can find application in the middle and far IR spectral regions, where the implementation of phase conjugation via SBS is either hindered or impossible at all.
Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•May 19, 1998•0 citations