Modal Dispersal of Information and Wave Mixing in Photorefractive Crystals for Information Retrieval, Processing and Sensing

Citation

Tomita, Yasuo (1989) Modal Dispersal of Information and Wave Mixing in Photorefractive Crystals for Information Retrieval, Processing and Sensing. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/vjga-q464. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-02152007-083930

Abstract

This thesis describes an experimental and theoretical study on modal dispersal of information and wave mixing in photorefractive crystals for vector phase conjugation and real-time information processing. Photorefractive crystals with short drift lengths (BaTiO₃ and Ba₁₋ₓSrₓNb₂O₆) and long drift ones (Bi₁₂SiO₂₀ and semi-insulating GaAs) are particularly used in this thesis.

In the first part, the photorefractive effect in electrooptic crystals is described in terms of Kukhtarev's band transport model. The explicit solution of the space-charge electric field for the case of one photorefractive species and one type of charge carrier is extended to the case of two photorefractive species and two types of charge carriers. The enhancement of the space-charge electric field is also described. In particular an approximate solution to Stepanov and Petrov's enhancement method of using AC external electric field is extended to a general case that describes the transient behavior for AC external electric field of arbitrary waveform. The anisotropic refractive index change due to the space-charge field formation is then described in terms of tensorial forms of the nonlinear susceptibility.

In the second part, anisotropic beam coupling in photorefractive crystals is presented and a general set of coupled-wave equations that describes beam coupling in amplitude, phase, and polarization is derived by using the nonlinear and tensorial susceptibility. The polarization properties of the interacting waves are particularly stressed. Two limiting cases, i.e., one for scalar beam coupling and the other for cross-polarization beam coupling, are obtained from the general expression and solved. Experimental results of beam coupling in semi-insulating GaAs are presented, and the signs of dominant charge carriers and the density of photorefractive species are estimated from beam-coupling gain. The enhancement of beam-coupling gain and its temperature dependence are also discussed.

In the third part, four-wave mixing for scalar and vector phase conjugation is described. Self-pumped phase-conjugate mirrors using photorefractive crystals are presented and one of the most interesting properties of these mirrors, i.e., the response to phase changes of inputs, is emphasized both theoretically and experimentally.

In the fourth part, two-wave and four-wave mixing in photorefractive crystals are applied to moving object detection, mathematical operation on images, and one-way image transmission through phase-distorting media. In these applications, polarization properties of interacting waves are particularly utilized.

In the fifth part, a novel method of vector phase conjugation by modal dispersal and scalar phase conjugation is discussed. The propagation characteristics of conjugate waves in strongly scattering media (e.g., mode-scrambling multimode fibers) are described theoretically, followed by the experimental demonstration of vector phase conjugation. In the theory the unitarity and time-reversal symmetry of the scattering matrix are incorporated into the analysis of the coherency matrix of the conjugate field. This theory which describes the physical process of the generation of vector phase conjugation can successfully explain the experimental results of its fidelity.

In the last part, we describe experiments in which the new concept of modal dispersal of information and scalar phase conjugation is used for several novel applications that include nonreciprocal polarization-distortion correction, amplitude-distortion correction, and phase-conjugate multimode fiber-optic sensors. Experiments as well as proposals for these applications are presented.

Thesis Files