Radiative nonlinear four-wave mixing can monitor the evolution of electronic wave packets, providing access to lifetimes and quantifying the light-induced couplings between excited states. We report the observation of quantum beats in an autoionizing electronic wave packet in krypton, probed using this technique. Analysis of the signal reveals that these beats originate from the contribution of previously unassigned, doubly excited states interacting with singly excited ones. We introduce a minimal theoretical model, based on multichannel quantum-defect theory, which quantitatively reproduces both the wave-packet dynamics and the static spectrum. This work combines a versatile, noncommensurate XUV-IR-based experimental scheme with a tractable model, establishing a powerful approach for the metrology and control of complex, correlated electronic states.

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• Atomic & molecular structure
• Optical transient phenomena
• Ultrafast phenomena
• Electronic structure
• Four-wave mixing
• Perturbative methods
• Transient absorption spectroscopy