Intracavity and Usual Phase Conjugation through Resonant Degenerate Four-Wave Mixing in a Three-Level Medium

Abstract

Resonant phase conjugation in 3-level media using level degeneracy effects is a field of recent studies ^1,2. Of particular interest is the generation of 2-photon induced Zeeman coherence among sublevels of an atomic state. Generally, the phase conjugate signal then contains contributions due to population and coherence effects. Experimentally the latter ones can often be isolated by using polarization selective detection. This scheme has been used, e.g. to observe transient oscillatory Zeeman coherence³ or collision induced Hanle signals⁴ in the phase conjugate wave. Under appropriate conditions, however, even the overall intensity of phase conjugate emission can drastically be changed by Zeeman coherence effects.¹