A dressed-state approach to mixing of bosonic matter waves is presented. Two cases are studied using this formalism. In the first, two macroscopically populated modes of atoms (two-wave mixing) are coupled through the presence of light. In the second case, three modes of Bogoliubov quasiparticles (three-wave mixing) are coupled through $s$-wave interaction. In both cases, wave mixing induces oscillations in the population of the different modes that decay due to interactions. Analytic expressions for the dressed basis spectrum and the evolution of the mode populations in time are derived both for resonant mixing and nonresonant mixing. Oscillations in the population of a given mode are shown to lead to a splitting in the decay spectrum of that mode, in analogy with the optical Autler-Townes splitting in the decay spectrum of a strongly driven atom. These effects cannot be described by a mean-field approximation.

• Received 2 June 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.72.053633