Optical phase conjugation is most commonly known for its use in military laser weapons systems for destroying enemy missiles. In this application, a laser beam is directed at a distant moving missile target and light rays scattered back from the target are allowed to enter the phase conjugator, a chamber containing a medium having nonlinear optical properties. In this nonlinear medium, the scattered rays interact with two opposed laser beams of similar wavelength to form a hologram-like electrostatic light refracting pattern called a “grating.” Once this grating pattern is formed, the system has essentially locked onto its target. A powerful laser weapon is then discharged into this holographic grating pattern, whereupon the coherent laser light reflects (from the grating) in such a way as to produce an intense outgoing laser beam that retraces the paths that had been followed by the incoming rays that had originally been scattered from the missile. Consequently, the outgoing laser pulse converges precisely back onto its missile target. ⁴⁷¹

Bearing in mind that plasma is one such “nonlinear medium,” we may now see what optical phase conjugation is, and why it was used in the Star Wars program, both the modern one, and the ancient one.⁴⁷²

Phase conjugation is best understood by breaking down its components into steps or stages:

1. A coherent beam of electromagnetic energy is aimed at a target, which beam is reflected back to the transmitter.

2. The returning beam is then split in a non-linear medium and interfered in it, which creates the “grating”, or, as Lt. Col Tom Bearden would put it, a “template” for action. The reason that an interference pattern is created is that the atmosphere distorted the returning or reflected beam, thus making it of slightly different frequency from the outgoing wave.

And here an important comment is necessary. Vacuum space is also both a wave propagating and wave distorting medium, for as the rotating version of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment of French physicist Georges Sagnac demonstrated, a split beam of light fired in opposite directions in a rotating system and then interfered produces precisely such a grating or interference pattern, demonstrating a local effect of an “aether drag.” But what would be the best way of detecting an interference grating for a target many millions of miles distant, where electromagnetic waves would have to travel to and back from an object through vacuum space? Here recall the rotating plasmas, or plasmoids of chapter two, and one has the answer: the non-linear medium par excellence for forming a grating that results from reflecting a beam through the wave-distorting medium of spaces would be a quickly rotating plasma. A further consequence of this view should also be noted, for this means that stars are natural phase conjugate mirrors of local stellar-system spaces. Once one has the concept of phase conjugation and the non-linear interference grating “capturing medium” of rotating plasma, one has the two essential ingredients for any such “scalar” weapon as LaViolette proposes.

3. Once this grid or interference pattern is created, the actual “punch” or energetic pulse of the weapon is fired through the “holographical” grating which then reverses the effect of the intervening distorting medium, and thus the main punch arrives at its target perfectly cohered and in perfect resonance with its target, since the “grating” is the signature of that target and that target only.

 

We now return to LaViolette, who proposes a “Mark II” version of phase conjugation, this time, not with cohered electromagnetic energy in the visible spectrum, but in the radio and microwave frequencies:

Consequently, it should be possible to phase conjugate microwaves by following techniques similar to those described in experiments with an optical phase conjugation. However, it appears that most of this research is still highly classified. While many papers have been published on optical phase conjugation, virtually no literature is available on the application of phase conjugation at microwave frequencies.⁴⁷³

 

And if LaViolette can propose microwave phase conjugation as a kind of Mark II, “power upgrade” of optical phase conjugation, it is not difficult to see that the next step, Mark III, would be X-ray and gamma ray phase conjugation.

...suppose that a bank of high-voltage capacitors are suddenly discharged to momentarily create a powerful air ionizing arc, or regularly shaped plasmoid. Also, suppose that a beam of coherent microwave radiation from a maser is targeted on this plasmoid. This beam would be sent out by a phase conjugating device something like that pictured... This device splits the original maser beam into two beams, a probe beam and a pump beam. The probe beam is directed toward the plasma target, and some of its scattered microwaves shine back toward the phase conjugator device and enter its mixer chamber. The mixer chamber if filled with a medium that has very nonlinear electromagnetic properties. Meanwhile, the pump beam that is split off from the maser generator is directed to the adjoining mixer chamber where it passes through the nonlinear mixer medium, reflects from a wall at the far end, makes a second pass back through the mixer medium, and then reenters the maser generator compartment.

The microwaves that scatter from the plasmoid and enter the mixer medium strongly interact with the two pump maser beams to form an electrostatic grating pattern. This holographic pattern stores information about the directions and phases of all the scattered maser beam microwaves that have entered the mixer. The counterpropagating pump beams then reflect from this grating pattern to produce an outgoing microwave beam that precisely traces the paths followed by the incoming scattered waves... the randomizing effects of wave scattering having been automatically compensated for. ...The grating that performs this time-reversed reflection is called a phase conjugate mirror and the mixing arrangement that allows all this to happen is termed a four wave mixer. .....This closed loop path from the maser beam generator, to the plasmoid, to the mixer, to the plasmoid, and back to the maser beam generator, causes the maser system to function as a phase conjugate resonator and to preferentially select and amplify only those microwaves that target the phase conjugating mixer chamber. As a result, most of the microwave power emitted from the maser will end up being confined to a beam that extends between the maser beam generator, the plasmoid target, and the mixer chamber. The energy bottled up in this beam will then progressively build up to a very high value.⁴⁷⁴