Slow-Light Six-Wave Mixing at Low Light Intensities

We report an experimental study of resonant six-wave mixing in coherently prepared Rb atoms. Electromagnetically induced transparency in a four-level atomic system suppresses the linear susceptibility and enhances the nonlinear susceptibilities, which leads to the resonantly enhanced, slow-photon six-wave mixing at low light intensities. The light emission in the six-wave mixing process can be viewed as resulting from diffraction of slow light off a resonant nonlinear grating induced in the four-level system by a standing-wave pump field.