Parametric wave mixing enhanced by velocity insensitive two-photon excitation in Rb vapour

We demonstrate how the orientation of the Rb cell can significantly affect the intensity and spectral characteristics of both the frequency up- and down-converted fields generated by nonlinear processes in Rb vapour. The efficiency of parametric wave mixing in Rb vapour excited to the 5D5/2 level by two-colour resonant laser light can be significantly increased by seeding the excitation region with coherent and directional radiation at 5.23 um that is resonant with the population inverted 5D5/2-6P3/2 transition. It has been shown that the process of velocity insensitive two-photon excitation is central to understanding the observed coherent blue and mid-IR light enhancements and that the velocity insensitive and velocity selective two-photon excitations could produce two co-existing but spectrally and spatially distinguishable mid-IR fields at 5.23 um.