Nonlinear response of the photorefractive phase conjugator: a perturbation analysis

Using perturbation theory, an examination is made of the fidelity of the photorefractive degenerate four-wave mixing phase conjugator. The general case is considered in which the probe is spatially varying (a beam) and temporally varying (a pulse), and the pumps are allowed to deplete. The probe wave is expanded as a sum of monochromatic plane-wave components. Carrying out the perturbation procedure up to the third order, the authors found that the components of the probe interact in pairs, so that the reflectance of each component of the conjugate wave is a combination of a linear term, a self-nonlinear term, and a term representing crosstalk with all other components of the probe. The crosstalk effect as a function of the frequency difference exhibits resonance behavior