Abstract
Phase conjugation (PC) via stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is a widely used technique. Until now most successful PC experiments have been done with pump energies of ~100 mJ. For higher energies, the conjugate fidelity degrades. While the exact cause of this fidelity degradation remains to be determined, it appears to represent a fundamental limit of the SBS PC process. From basic considerations It can be concluded that good fidelity requires that the SBS gain length be several times the diffraction length, thereby promoting thorough mixing of different parts of the beam and achieving high selectivity for the phase conjugate mode. Indeed, experiments in our laboratory have shown that above ~10 times the SBS threshold energy, the PC fidelity is reduced. Competing nonlinearities or specifics of the geometry employed can also affect the fidelity. This fidelity degradation presents a problem in high energy laser applications which require PC at energies >1 J.
© 1989 Optical Society of America
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