Polarization dependence of phase-conjugate reflectivities in solid films containing randomly oriented saturable dyes

The properties of polarization-dependent phase-conjugate (PC) reflectivities by degenerate four-wave mixing in saturable-dye-doped films are investigated on the basis of a four-level model including an excited-state absorption. Numerical calculations are carried out by taking account of the effect of molecular orientation as well as of pump propagation under the assumption that optically anisotropic dye molecules are rigidly fixed in a solid matrix without any positional and orientational order, in which a PC wave can be generated even in the case of a probe wave perpendicularly polarized to pump waves. Two cases of the polarization state are employed, where the polarization direction of the probe wave is either parallel or perpendicular to that of the parallel linearly polarized pump waves. Numerically calculating the PC reflectivities as a function of the pump intensity, we show how the polarization properties of the PC-reflectivity curves depend on saturation parameters, and clarify the influences of the molecular orientational and the pump propagation effect. The numerical results are compared with the experimental results obtained by using eosin-Y-doped polyvinyl alcohol films as saturable absorbers.