Transient phase conjugation by degenerate four-wave mixing in saturable dyes

Transient phase conjugation by degenerate four-wave mixing in saturable dyes is investigated theoretically and experimentally. Two special cases are examined: (1) the case in which two pump waves and a probe wave are simultaneously turned on and (2) the case in which the pump waves are turned on well before the incidence of the probe wave. For case (1) a peak appears in the transient reflectivity for high pump intensity, while for case (2) the reflectivity increases monotonically with time up to the steady-state value irrespective of the value of the pump intensity.