Theory of photorefractive phase conjugators with mutually incoherent beams

Plane-wave analysis of the recently demonstrated photorefractive phase conjugators with mutually incoherent beams is presented. Based on four-wave mixing theory, two important configurations, the bird-wing phase conjugator and the mutually incoherent beam coupler are investigated by solving coupled nonlinear equations with beam depletion and absorption. Various intensity performances are theoretically analyzed. Different configurations of this kind of mutually incoherent phase conjugators are compared. Competition of different processes is discussed. Experimental data are well fitted by the theory