Coherent control with shaped femtosecond laser pulses applied to ultracold molecules

Abstract

We report on coherent control of excitation processes of translationally ultracold rubidium dimers in a magneto-optical trap by using shaped femtosecond laser pulses. Evolution strategies are applied in a feedback loop in order to optimize the photoexcitation of the Rb2 molecules, which subsequently undergo ionization or fragmentation. A superior performance of the resulting pulses compared to unshaped pulses of the same pulse energy is obtained by distributing the energy among specific spectral components. The demonstration of coherent control to ultracold ensembles opens a path to actively influence fundamental photo-induced processes in molecular quantum gases.

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• Short-pulse photoassociation in rubidium below the D${}_1$ line
• Photoassociation adiabatic passage of ultracold Rb atoms to form ultracold Rb_2 molecules
• Coherent Control of Ultracold Collisions with Chirped Light: Direction Matters
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• Photoassociation and coherent transient dynamics in the interaction of ultracold rubidium atoms with shaped femtosecond pulses - II. Theory
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• Coherent control of ultracold 85Rb trap-loss collisions with nonlinearly frequency-chirped light
• Two-photon coherent control of femtosecond photoassociation
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• Production of Ultracold Molecules with Chirped Nanosecond Pulses: Evidence for Coherent Effects
• Efficient Formation of Ultracold Molecules with Chirped Nanosecond Pulses
• Perspectives for coherent optical formation of strontium molecules in their electronic ground state
• Probing Ultracold Collisional Dynamics with Frequency-Chirped Pulses
• Influence of a tight isotropic harmonic trap on photoassociation in ultracold homonuclear alkali gases
• Correlation dynamics after short-pulse photoassociation
• Demonstrating coherent control in 85Rb2 using ultrafast laser pulses: a theoretical outline of two experiments