2-WAVE MIXING IN ND-YAG BY GAIN SATURATION

Two-wave mixing at lambda = 1.06 mum in the saturable gain of a flash-lamp-pumped Nd:YAG amplifier was investigated, both experimentally and theoretically, by development of a transient analysis. Despite the local response of the inverted medium, it is shown that energy redistribution can occur, thus leading to the depletion of a low-intensity signal beam. Finally we measured a diffraction efficiency of 20% of the transmission-gain grating by diffracting a probe beam at lambda = 1.06 mum under the Bragg condition.