Abstract

Collisional perturbation of atoms in a vapor is well known to induce additional resonances in degenerate or nearly degenerate four-wave mixing.^1,2 Actually the effect of collisions in nonlinear optics includes a much broader class of phenomenon, in which the dephasing of the wave functions during the collisions modifies the response of the medium to the input waves. Two examples of such effects are described: coherent emission of radiation induced by collisions and collisionally aided amplification.

© 1986 Optical Society of America