Abstract

Many important effects such as optical bistability or periodic and chaotic self-pulsations have their origin in the interaction of two counterpropagating optical beams of the same frequency in a nonlinear medium. The investigation of the actual behavior of the standing waves set up inside a nonlinear Fabry-Perot etalon by an external pump beam is generally performed by observation of the transmitted beam. As predicted theoritically⁽¹⁾, intracavity phase conjugation is another way to test this interaction between the two counterpropagating pump waves inside the nonlinear cavity.

© 1985 Optical Society of America