A NEW METHOD OF ANALYSIS OF HIGH-POWER PHASE CONJUGATION

In this paper we demonstrate the presence of a phase conjugate component in the backscattered wave from stimulated Brillouin scattering. This is done by application of the asymptotic series methods of Luneberg and Kline. For the common case where the process is dominated by acoustic loss we first show that geometric optical ray retracing is favored. We then show that the spatial variation of the slowly varying part of the phase of the geometric optics component of the backscattered wave reproduces that of the incident wave. This is the equivalent of phase conjugation for the geometric optics component of the field.