Self-pumped, optical phase conjugation method and apparatus using pseudo-conjugator to produce retroreflected seed beam
US5038359A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Oct 10, 1989 |
| Grant date | Aug 6, 1991 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Oct 10, 2009 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH01S3/10076
- WIPO fieldOptics
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
An optical input beam is transmitted through a non-linear medium capable of two-wave mixing gain by photorefractive, Brillouin, Raman, or other non-linear optical mechanism. A psuedo-conjugator retroreflects the input beam which has passed through the medium, back into the medium. The retroreflected beam acts as a seed, which lowers the threshold for producing a self-pumped conjugate reflected beam in the medium by stimulated scattering. The pseudo-conjugator may be a flat array of retroreflecting elements in the form of spheres or corner reflectors. A mosaic pattern of conjugating elements can be phase-locked to yield larger apertures and/or energy scaling, in a master-oscillator, power-amplifier (MOPA), or a four-wave mixer (FWM) configuration. The retroreflected beam can be modulated to temporally encode information onto the conjugate beam, and/or polarized to increase the system efficiency. The input and self-pumped conjugate reflected beams can be used as reference or pump beams in a FWM configuration.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.