Recent Participant Comments:

     "A good introduction with understandable explanations throughout. Especially considering difficulty of subject..Excellent!"

     "Dr. Fisher is an excellent communicator. Text and notes fit well together. Well organized presentation."

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     "Great instructor - very knowledgeable speaker."

Course Description:

This in-house course, personally presented by Dr. R. A. Fisher, encompasses virtually all major aspects of optical phase conjugation. It is suitable for a wide range of audiences.

Optical phase conjugation is a new technique for the automatic correction of distorted laser beams. In contrast to traditional electromechanical techniques for adaptive optics correction, optical phase conjugation utilizes nonlinear optical effects to produce the phase-conjugate wave.

The course begins with an introduction to optical phase conjugation and a tutorial description of the necessary nonlinear optics. The main body of the course discusses the various optical phase conjugation techniques, providing both underlying principles and experimental details. Kerr-like four-wave mixing, resonant four-wave mixing, stimulated Brillouin scattering, Brillouin-enhanced four-wave mixing, thermal four-wave mixing, photorefractive phenomena, and three-wave mixing are carefully covered. Finally, many practical applications for optical phase conjugation are identified.

Each idea is explained in clear and simple terms with an emphasis on underlying physical principles and with a minimum of mathematics. Practical applications Pertinent references and review materials are identified. The course notes contain copies of each vuegraph used during the day so that participants can spend a maximum amount of time listening and understanding. Margins are extra large so that participants may write additional notes, making their experiences as useful as possible.

 Benefits
This course will enable you to:

• Understand the image-transformation properties of optical phase conjugation.
• Appreciate properties from the point of view of the "wavefront."
• Appreciate concepts of "retarded" and "advanced" as they apply to the phase conjugation process.
• Understand the basic underlying nonlinear optical effects which produce conjugate waves.
• Design conjugators using four-wave mixing effects in Kerr materials.
• Understand how absorbers and amplifiers can be configured to produce phase-conjugate signals.
• Appreciate how stimulated Brillouin scattering can be useful as a "thresholding" phase conjugator.
• Understand how Brillouin-enhanced four-wave mixing can produce conjugate reflectivities exceeding one million.
• Appreciate why thermal effects nearly always accompany the other effects.
• Develop a solid understanding of the many ways that photorefractive devices can produce conjugate signals.
• Understand the many practical applications for the optical phase conjugation phenomenon.

Continuing Education Units (CEU's) available upon request.