ENHANCED CONVERSION EFFICIENCY IN 3-WAVE MIXING VIA ELECTROMAGNETICALLY REDUCED FUNDAMENTAL WAVE ABSORPTION

A three-level atomic scheme for resonantly enhanced sum frequency mixing is considered within which strong absorption of a fundamental input wave is the limiting factor on conversion. It is shown that for the case where the other input field is sufficiently strong to cause electromagnetically induced transparency so reducing this parasitic absorption, there is still a significant second order susceptibility, and moreover the efficiency of the nonlinear process is greatly increased in the doppler broadened regime.