Spatial and Spectral Coherent Control with Frequency Combs

Abstract

Quantum coherent control (1-3) is a powerful tool for steering the outcome of quantum processes towards a desired final state, by accurate manipulation of quantum interference between multiple pathways. Although coherent control techniques have found applications in many fields of science (4-9), the possibilities for spatial and high-resolution frequency control have remained limited. Here, we show that the use of counter-propagating broadband pulses enables the generation of fully controlled spatial excitation patterns. This spatial control approach also provides decoherence reduction, which allows the use of the high frequency resolution of an optical frequency comb (10,11). We exploit the counter-propagating geometry to perform spatially selective excitation of individual species in a multi-component gas mixture, as well as frequency determination of hyperfine constants of atomic rubidium with unprecedented accuracy. The combination of spectral and spatial coherent control adds a new dimension to coherent control with applications in e.g nonlinear spectroscopy, microscopy and high-precision frequency metrology.

12 pages

References in corpus (5)

• Control of quantum phenomena: Past, present, and future
• Shaped-pulse optimisation of coherent soft-x-rays
• Direct frequency comb measurements of absolute optical frequencies and population transfer dynamics
• Control of Four-Level Quantum Coherence via Discrete Spectral Shaping of an Optical Frequency Comb
• Direct frequency comb spectroscopy of trapped ions

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Frequency comb spectroscopy
• Spatial beam self-cleaning in multimode fiber
• Doppler-free Fourier transform spectroscopy
• High-Precision Spectroscopy with Counter-Propagating Femtosecond Pulses
• Terahertz Laser Combs in Graphene Field-Effect Transistors
• Observation of Rb Two-Photon Absorption Directly Excited by an Erbium-Fiber-Laser-Based Optical Frequency Comb via Spectral Control
• Nonlinear transmission spectroscopy with dual frequency combs
• Coherent Control of Resonant Two-Photon Transitions by Counter-Propagating Ultrashort Pulse Pairs
• Doppler-free coherent-control spectroscopy with a colliding pair of shaped pulses
• Direct frequency-comb spectroscopy of $6S_{1/2}$-$8S_{1/2}$ transitions of atomic cesium