Abstract

Photorefractive self-pumped phase conjugation is attractive for its simplicity and high reflectivity with low-power light sources. In order to realize its potential applications, it is important to study its response. So far the response of a phase-conjugate wave has been described with its rise time. It has not studied how the phase-conjugate wave responds when the spatial structure of an input probe wave is changed dynamically. We investigated the response of the phase conjugate wave by using two mutually coherent input beams, which can be regarded as components of a probe wave, and by introducing sinusoidal phase changes into one of them with varied frequencies. Each input beam has a power of 6 mW at the wavelength of 515 nm. A BaTiO₃ crystal was employed as a self-pumped phase-conjugate mirror.¹ By measuring relative phase between the two output beams, which can be regarded as components of a phase-conjugate wave, we found the response characteristic represented by a time-lag of first order, which is similar to RC circuit. The response time thus determined was 0.32 s, which was much shorter than the rise time of 30 s obtained with the same condition.

© 1990 Optical Society of America