Abstract

In many experiments dealing with phase conjugation in photorefractive crystals the effect of light-beam self-curving inside the crystal has been observed.^1–3 This effect has been ascribed to subsequent beam fanning into noisy scattered waves⁴ or to self-tilting of a single-mode Gaussian beam.⁵ Both approaches have problems in the quantitative interpretation of the phenomena observed. In this report we propose an alternative analytic theory that considers a curving beam to be a fine-scale-structure speckle wave and explains the tilting effect as a redistribution of energy among components inside the beam’s angular spectrum.

© 1993 Optical Society of America