Energy exchange under conditions of a two-beam interaction in a photorefractive medium

A two-dimensional theory of the interaction of two optical beams in a photorefractive medium is formulated. Beams having planar and parabolic intensity distributions are used to analyze the laws governing energy exchange and distortion of the beam profile during the interaction process. It is shown that an allowance for two-dimensional effects gives rise to new quantitative and qualitative results compared with the known one-dimensional theory.