Two-wave mixing in nematic liquid crystals doped with dyes and chiral agents is studied. The photo-induced spatial modulation of the chiral structure, together with the diffusion anisotropy of the mixture, determine a relatively fast response time, a spatial resolution of 1 (mu)m, and a maximum gain for circularly polarized interacting beams. The gain is insensitive to changes in linear polarization, while it varies with the grating period and with the pump-to-signal intensity ratio.
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