Radiation-matter oscillations and spectral line narrowing in field-correlated four-wave mixing. I. Theory

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Abstract
The theoretical basis for new signal transients and spectral features generated in field-correlated four-wave mixing spectroscopies is developed. Special attention is given to those signal responses that are sensitive to phase or amplitude correlation among the input driving fields, and not simply their intensity correlation. Thus the cases of incoherent broadband excitation and of coherent short-pulsed excitation will be discussed and compared. Applications to the coherent Raman spectroscopies, both electronically nonresonant and full resonant, are analyzed. Novel interferometric oscillatory behavior is exposed in terms of radiation-matter detuning beats and matter-matter bilevel and trilevel quantum beats. In addition, new resonances are found that have submaterial linewidths and detuning parameters that lock onto the mode frequency of the driven chromophore. These spectral features are members of a class of bichromophore resonant line shapes arising from nonlinear mixing with correlated driving fields. Analytic results are presented and modeled to anticipate experimental results presented in the following paper [Phys. Rev. A 43, 3922 (1991)].