Two-beam coupling gain has been measured in Rh:doped BaTiO3 yielding a value of the order of 20,000. We believe that this is the highest beam coupling gain reported so far. Rh-doped BaTiO3 exhibits very strong intensity-dependent absorption, and this effect is considered when discussing experimental results.
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.