Laser-millimeter-wave two-photon Rabi oscillations en route to coherent population transfer

Grimes, David

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/96852 Copy

Description

Title

Laser-millimeter-wave two-photon Rabi oscillations en route to coherent population transfer

Author(s)

Grimes, David

Contributor(s)

• Field, Robert W.
• Colombo, Tony
• Zhou, Yan
• Barnum, Timothy J.

Issue Date

2017-06-22

Keyword(s)

Instrument/technique demonstration

Abstract

Core-nonpenetrating Rydberg states of molecules are a relatively untapped resource in molecular physics. Due to the $ell$($ell$+1)/r$^2$ centrifugal barrier, the Rydberg electron in high-$ell$ states is essentially decoupled from the ion-core. This decoupling leads to the system becoming atom-like, with long lifetimes, an “almost good” $ell$ quantum number, and “pure-electronic” transitions that follow $Delta$J$^+$=0 and $Delta$v$^+$=0 propensity rules. Access to these nonpenetrating states is generally blocked by the necessity that the multistep excitation scheme traverses a “zone of death” in which nonradiative decay mechanisms are prohibitively fast. _x000d_ _x000d_ Coherent population transfer methods, such as STImulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP), allow population of core-nonpenetrating states without even transiently populating states in the “zone of death.” We demonstrate coherent two-photon population transfer to Rydberg states of barium atoms using a pulsed dye laser and a chirped-pulse millimeter-wave spectrometer. Numerical calculations, using a density matrix formalism, reproduce our experimental results and provide insights into the fractional population transferred, optimal experimental conditions, and possibilities for future improvements, in particular extension to full STIRAP._x000d_

Publisher

International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/96852

DOI

https://doi.org/10.15278/isms.2017.RI05

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2017 David Grimes

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