High-resolution four-wave light-mixing studies of collision-induced coherence in Na vapor

Near-resonant four-wave light mixing in Na vapor with inert buffer gases reveals collision-induced coherences when the difference frequency between two incident light beams equals the hyperfine splitting or the Zeeman splitting between two states of the 3²S ground-state manifold. The Doppler broadening of the corresponding resonances decreases with increasing buffer-gas pressure. The width of the resonances becomes significantly narrower than the spontaneous linewidth of the near-resonant intermediate state and is determined by spin-exchange collisions between ground-state atoms. The dependence of the intensity of these collision-induced resonances on buffer-gas pressure and detuning from one-photon resonances is measured. Selection rules for various polarizations of the incident light fields and directions of an externally applied magnetic field are established.