fourwave

Fourwave, often written four-wave mixing (FWM), is a nonlinear optical interaction in which four light waves interact within a medium to generate new frequency components. The process arises from the third-order nonlinear susceptibility of the medium and conserves energy and momentum, requiring phase matching for efficient conversion.

In a typical three-input interaction, three waves at frequencies ω1, ω2, and ω3 combine to produce a fourth wave at ω4, with ω4 = ω1 + ω2 − ω3. In degenerate FWM, two photons at a pump frequency ωp interact with a signal at ωs to generate an idler at ωi = 2ωp − ωs. The exact frequencies and efficiency depend on the medium’s dispersion, nonlinearity, and the intensities of the interacting waves.

Applications of fourwave mixing are broad. It is used for wavelength conversion in fiber-optic communications, enabling all-optical signal processing, regeneration, and routing. It also serves as a mechanism for generating correlated photon pairs in quantum optics and for implementing optical parametric amplification in integrated photonic devices. In practice, FWM is exploited in optical fibers, waveguides, and microresonators, with engineers tailoring dispersion and confinement to optimize phase matching and interaction length.

Challenges include phase-matching limitations due to material dispersion, competition from other nonlinear processes such as stimulated Raman scattering, and the sensitivity of efficiency to pump power and noise. Fourwave remains a fundamental nonlinear optical process with wide relevance in classical and quantum photonics.