Polarization properties of phase conjugation by degenerate four-wave mixing in a medium of rigidly held dye molecules

The saturation properties of dye molecules that are rigidly held in a solid host are qualitatively different from those of molecules that are free to rotate. We have found that these unique saturation characteristics can be exploited to achieve nearly perfect vector phase conjugation for field strengths near the saturation intensity. We have studied these properties experimentally by using fluorescein-doped boric acid glass as the nonlinear-optical material.