Collision-induced self-diffraction in an atomic gas

Laws governing degenerate self-diffraction accompanying concurrent propagation of steady-state light waves are determined for the case when the effects are exclusively due to depolarizing collisions between active and impurity atoms. An investigation is also made of the self-diffraction features which are weakly influenced by depolarizing atomic collisions or do not depend on these at all. It is demonstrated that the results can be applied in practice.