Quantum dynamics of a two-state system induced by a chirped zero-area pulse

Abstract

It is well known that area pulses make Rabi oscillation and chirped pulses in the adiabatic interaction regime induce complete population inversion of a two-state system. Here we show that chirped zero-area pulses could engineer an interplay between the adiabatic evolution and Rabi-like oscillations. In a proof-of-principle experiment utilizing spectral chirping of femtosecond laser pulses with a resonant spectral hole, we demonstrate that the chirped zero-area pulses could induce, for example, complete population inversion and return of the cold rubidium atom two-state system. Experimental result agrees well with the theoretically considered overall dynamics, which could be approximately modeled to a Ramsey-like three-pulse interaction, where the $x$- and $z$- rotations are respectively driven by the hole and the main pulse.

7 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Ultrafast Rabi oscillation of a Gaussian atom ensemble
• Rabi oscillations of Morris-Shore transformed $N$-state systems by elliptically polarized ultrafast laser pulses

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Achieving robust and high-fidelity quantum control via spectral phase optimization
• Robust two-level system control by a detuned and chirped laser pulse
• Selective excitation in a three-state system using a hybrid adiabatic-nonadiabatic interaction
• Single-laser-pulse implementation of arbitrary ZYZ rotations of an atomic qubit