Abstract

A quantitative theory of transient wave mixing effects in a general nonlinear medium is presented. The theory accounts for the effects of side diffractions created by the coherent interaction between two incident beams and three different sets of intensity and refractive-index gratings. All other relevant parameters, such as laser pulse width, medium response time, nonlinearities, interaction length, intensities, beam ratio, phase modulation effects, and losses, are explicitly accounted for. The theory is applied to our experimental results for beam-amplification effects in silicon associated with picosecond laser-induced valence-to-conduction band transitions. Excellent agreements between theory and experiment are obtained.

© 1990 Optical Society of America