Nondegenerate four-wave mixing in rubidium vapor: Transient regime

We investigate the transient response of the generated light from four-wave mixing (FWM) in the diamond configuration using a step-down field excitation. The transients show fast decay times and oscillations that depend on the detunings and intensities of the fields. A simplified model taking into account the thermal motion of the atoms, propagation, absorption, and dispersion effects shows qualitative agreement with the experimental observations with the energy levels in rubidium (5S{sub 1/2}, 5P{sub 1/2}, 5P{sub 3/2}, and 6S{sub 1/2}). The atomic polarization comes from all the contributions of different velocity classes of atoms in the ensemble modifying dramatically the total transient behavior of the light from FWM.