Abstract

We recently presented a theory to describe the coupling between infinite trains of mode-locked picosecond laser pulses in a photorefractive crystal.¹ We showed that a steady-state photorefractive grating forms with an amplitude proportional to the electric field correlation of the two light beams. We also showed that the gain of the average power of a weak probe beam is proportional to the magnitude squared of the correlation function, and that the pulses change their shape as they couple and propagate through the photorefractive crystal. Although this theory was used to explain related experiments,^2,3 it has never been verified directly. Here we present experimental results to verify our beam-coupling theory.

© 1992 Optical Society of America