FANNING AND PHOTOREFRACTIVE SELF-PUMPED 4-WAVE-MIXING GEOMETRIES

One of the most spectacular recent achievements in the field of photorefractive nonlinear optics is a demonstration of a family of self-pumped four-wave mixing (FWM) phase conjugation geometries, that are potentially promising in all-optical applications. Operation of these devices is closely connected with the effect of asymmetric light-induced scattering of a laser beam in a photorefractive crystal (the so-called fanning). Nevertheless fanning was completely ignored in the preceding analysis of these geometries. We present results of recent theoretical and experimental investigations that reveal influence of fanning on the operation of self-pumped FWM geometries and show how fanning in a number of cases determines both their dynamics and final stationary states.