Phase locking via Brillouin-enhanced four-wave-mixing phase conjugation

We show that it is possible to control with good accuracy the relative phase of several conjugate beams for a properly designed Brillouin-enhanced four-wave-mixing phase conjugation system. Three geometries, two that utilize two Brillouin cells and another that requires only one Brillouin cell, that achieve conjugate phase control are studied and many properties of each system are examined. We show that for our high-power laser application the one-cell geometry performs as well as or better than the other geometry. Phase control is shown to be useful for beam combination, vector phase conjugation, and optical path selection. A laser system that utilizes the one-cell geometry to enhance its performance is built and examined.