Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 60308002 and 60678005, the Foundation for the National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of China under Grant No 200339, the Key Project of the Ministry of Education of China under Grant No 105156, the For Ying-Tong Education Foundation for Young Teachers of Institution of Higher Education of China under Grant No 101061, and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Programme of Higher Education of China (20050698017).
We investigate the third-order nonlinear absorption and dispersion of femto- and atto-second polarization beats between the one-photon degenerate four-wave mixing process and the two-photon nondegenerate four-wave mix...