Extraordinary-polarized light does not always yield the highest reflectivity in self-pumped BaTiO(3)

For certain input geometries it is possible to double the phase-conjugate reflectivity of the self-pumped (cat) phase conjugator in BaTiO(3) by the inclusion of an ordinary-polarized component in the input beam. It is also shown that it is possible to control the power in the phase-conjugate output with an overall gain. The observed enhancement is attributed to erasure of competing parasitic gratings by the ordinary-polarized component.