Experimental investigation of a photorefractive ring phase modulation amplifier

Philippe Delaye (1) , Laurent Frey (1) , Alain Mugnier (1) , Gérald Roosen (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Manolia

We present the experimental investigation of a photorefractive ring phase modulation amplifier, that is not resonant and that can work with distorted beams. We show that with this geometry an amplification by a factor 5 of a phase modulation signal is possible. We also show that this strong amplification is alleviated by the presence of losses in the ring. These losses lead to a real gain in signal to noise ratio of a factor 3, that nevertheless expresses that with such a system the photon noise limit of laser ultrasonics system can be overpassed. The losses are also responsible for the strong sensitivity of the system to the vibrations, which puts a strong limitation of the ring amplifier

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Philippe Delaye, Laurent Frey, Alain Mugnier, Gérald Roosen. Experimental investigation of a photorefractive ring phase modulation amplifier. Optics Communications, 1997, 139, pp.148-156. ⟨10.1016/S0030-4018(97)00115-6⟩. ⟨hal-00677543v2⟩