title: Degenerate four-wave mixing in plasmas.
abstract: We report an analysis of degenerate four-wave mixing in uniform plasmas and show that the magnitude of the third-order susceptibility (varying as lambda(2)) can be comparable to (10(-11) esu for lambda = 10.6 microm) or orders of magnitude larger (10(-3) esu for lambda= 10 cm) than the corresponding susceptibility in typical nonlinear materials. The nonlinear contribution to the macroscopic current resulting from the ponderomotive force is generated from the two-component fluid model by means of a linearized perturbation scheme. Numerical estimates of the nonlinear susceptibility show that relatively large signals can be produced easily without significant problems from competing physical phenomena such as self-focusing or stimulated Brillouin and Raman scattering.
authors.affiliation: Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California 90265, USA.
authors.forename: D G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Steel
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Lam