Tsutomu SATO, Kazuo NAKAGAWA and Hirofumi FUJIWARA

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Muroran Institute of Technology, 27-1 Mizumoto, Muroran 050-8585, Japan

(Received November 15, 2001; Accepted December 28, 2001)

We have investigated the polarization state of a gated phase conjugate beam using a methyl-orange doped poly-vinyl alcohol (MO/PVA) film in 16 different combinations of linear and circular polarization states of a probe beam and pump beams. The experimental results agree with the theoretical prediction based on the Jones matrix method. Of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility tensors _χijkl of the MO/PVA film, the _χ1221 at the 647 nm wavelength in degenerate four-wave mixing under exposure of a gating 515 nm light takes a very small value compared with _χ1111 and _χ1122. On the other hand, in the configuration of a probe beam and pump beams having linearly crossed polarizations and without gating light, the MO/PVA film generates a strong linearly polarized PC beam, so that _χ1221 takes a large value at 515 nm.

Key words: azo dye, methyl-orange, degenerate four-wave mixing, gated phase conjugation, vectorial phase conjugation, nonlinear susceptibility tensor