Four-wave mixing in an artificial Kerr medium.

Degenerate four-wave mixing experiments have been performed using a liquid suspension of 0.234-microm-diameter latex spheres as the nonlinear medium. The measured effective optical Kerr coefficient, n(2), is 3.6 x 10(-3) (MW/cm(2))(-1). This is ~10(5)x the value for CS(2). Measured grating reflectivity, formation, and decay times are in reasonable agreement with a simple model assuming Rayleigh scattering and Brownian diffusion.