  We are able to clearly distinguish the processes responsible for enhanced
low-intensity atomic Kerr nonlinearity, namely coherent population trapping and
coherent population oscillations in experiments performed on the Rb D1 line,
where one or the other process dominates under appropriate conditions. The
potential of this new approach based on wave mixing for probing coherent atomic
media is discussed. It allows the new spectral components to be detected with
sub-kHz resolution, which is well below the laser linewidth limit. Spatial
selectivity and enhanced sensitivity make this method useful for testing dilute
cold atomic samples.
