Abstract

Recent investigations of gain gratings written in solid-state laser media have shown the feasibility of phase-conjugation by four- wave mixing in saturable amplifying media¹ and the use of gain gratings as efficient diffractive optical elements.² The gratings are formed by the interaction of multiple beams or the self-interaction of a single input beam inside an amplifier and can be thought of as volume ‘holograms’ written in the bulk of the gain media.

© 1994 Optical Society of America