We report experimental observation of three-field noise correlation between two coexisting four-wave mixing (FWM) signals and the probe signal in a coherently-prepared rubidium vapor system. The two FWM signals in a double-Λ type quasi-four-level atomic system are obtained in different directions via their respective phase-matching conditions and can be detected individually. These signals and the probe beam are found to be strongly correlated or anticorrelated with each other.
We report experimental observation of three-field noise correlation between two coexisting four-wave mixing (FWM) signals and the probe signal in a coherently-prepared rubidium vapor system. The two FWM signals in a double-Λ type quasi-four-level atomic system are obtained in different directions via their respective phase-matching conditions and can be detected individually. These signals and the probe beam are found to be strongly correlated or anticorrelated with each other.
Rb atoms. We observe that the spectral shape of the FWM spectrum is identical to that of the two-photon absorption (TPA) spectrum due to two-photon coherence and that it is independent of the relative phase-noise of the pump light. From these results, we clarify that the two-photon coherence plays a very important role in the FWM process. Furthermore, we measure the relative linewidth of the FWM signal to the probe and pump lasers by means of a beat interferometer. We confirmed that the phase of the FWM signal is strongly correlated with that of the pump laser under the condition of phase-locked probe and coupling lasers for two-photon coherence.
Four-wave mixing (FWM) of optical fields has been extensively used in quantum information processing, sensing, and memories. It also forms a basis for nonlinear spectroscopies such as transient grating, stimulated Raman, and photon echo where phase matching is used to select desired components of the third-order response of matter. Here we report an experimental study of the two-dimensional quantum noise intensity difference spectra of a pair of squeezed beams generated by FWM in hot Rb vapor. The measurement reveals details of the [Formula: see text] susceptibility dressed by the strong pump field which induces an AC Stark shift, with higher spectral resolution compared to classical measurements of probe and conjugate beam intensities. We demonstrate how quantum correlations of squeezed light can be utilized as a spectroscopic tool which unlike their classical counterparts are robust to external noise.
We investigate the nonlinear frequency conversion of nondiffracting optical modes via a nondegenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) process in rubidium vapor. In this process, two strong control fields and a weak probe field mutually interact via a four-level double-$\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ type atomic system to produce a low frequency weak Stokes field which is a phase conjugate to probe. We show that any arbitrary mode such as Airy, Bessel, Mathieu, and Weber beams encoded initially in the spatial envelope of the probe field are efficiently transferred to the FWM Stokes field by satisfying the phase-matching condition. Interestingly, we found that the transmitted intensity profiles of the Stokes beam are identical to that of the probe beam, while the phase profile is complementary. The phase conjugation property of output beams is revealed by interfering them with a copropagating plane wave. We further found the fidelity in terms of structural similarity between two transmitted modes of about 99, which substantiates the high efficiency of the FWM process. The efficient transfer and frequency conversion of such diffraction-free beams may have potential applications in nonlinear optical and quantum technologies.
We observe experimentally huge enhanced four-wave mixing based on Raman resonance in an 85Rb atomic vapor system. With the decrease of coupling field power or the increase of experimental temperature, the signal tends to be narrowed down in linewidth, and be basically the same spectrum as the stimulated Raman spectroscopy. It is found that the macroscopic polarization interference effect plays a crucial role in determining the nonlinear spectra. Further more, in the Doppler-broadened Λ-type energy level system, there is a strong relationship among electromagnetically induced transparency, four-wave mixing and stimulated Raman spectroscopy. The sharp transparent window in electromagnetically induced transparency can be interpreted as the suppression of Raman gain on the linear absorption of the probe field. However, the four-wave mixing signal is a new field generated by the atomic vapor system, and it comes from the Raman gain which is affected and modified by the absorption and dispersion of the nonlinear optical medium. It shows that in a Λ-type Doppler-broadened system, in essence, both the electromagnetically induced transparency and enhanced four-wave mixing stem from stimulated Raman scattering based on the third-order nonlinear processes, just the spectra of which are from different ways and objects of detection.
In this work, we present a set of experiments involving four-wave mixing processes in rubidium atoms. We employ several experimental configurations exploring two- and three-level systems in cascade or Λ configurations, all of which are in a copropagating geometry, to investigate different physical phenomena present in each scenario. In the first experiment, we combine a cw diode laser and a 1 GHz femtosecond pulse train to generate coherent blue light through the four-wave mixing process in hot rubidium vapor. The generated coherent signal is analyzed by scanning either the diode frequency or the repetition rate of the frequency comb. In both cases, the cw laser induces an Autler- Townes splitting with a wide separation in the doublet structure due to the configuration of copropagating fields. To model these results, we employ the density matrix formalism to write the Bloch equations and solve them numerically. The solutions allow us to explore other cases beyond those involving our experimental setup, comparing the response of the upper-level population and the generated signal coherence for homogeneously and non-homogeneously broadened systems. Moreover, in this same experiment, we also observed an unexpected interference effect between excitation routes of the four-wave mixing process when the repetition rate of the pulse train is scanned. The theoretical model demonstrates that the interfering effect appears only when the repetition rate is carefully chosen to produce a pair of modes of the frequency comb resonant with both one- and two-photon transitions for the same atomic velocity group. In the second experiment, still with a hot rubidium vapor, we explore two symmetrical degenerate four- wave mixing signals induced by two almost copropagating laser beams, with~ka and~kb wave-vectors, and detected simultaneously in the 2~ka −~kb and 2~kb −~ka directions. Each spectrum has a single peak with a short frequency separation between them, which our model indicates is due to the nonlinear behavior of the refractive indexes, a consequence of the high intensity of both input fields. Finally, we use the same experimental setup for the two symmetrical signals to study the field intensity fluctuations of the degenerate four-wave mixing signals and the transmission signals. In this case, the sample is an ensemble of cold rubidium atoms in a magneto-optical trap. There is an intensity- intensity cross-correlation between the signals due to the resonant phase-noise to amplitude-noise conversion. In this type of cold system, we can neglect the Doppler- broadening, allowing a straightforward study of the dependency of the correlations on the laser detuning. In these measurements, we observe a type of oscillation in the correlation curves that the theoretical model indicates to be connected with Rabi oscillations, revealed by the fluctuations long after the transient period.
We experimentally investigate the soliton formation and dynamics in the nonlinear propagation of the generated signal and probe beams in four-wave mixing (FWM) process with atomic coherence in a three-level atomic system, under the competition between focusing and defocusing nonlinearities, as well as between gain and dissipation, due to the third- and fifth-order nonlinear susceptibilities with opposite signs. With multi-parameter controllability and nonlinear competition in the system, fundamental, dipole, and azimuthally-modulated vortex FWM solitons can transform mutually from one to the other. Such investigations have potential applications in optical pattern formation and control, and all-optical communication.