Coherent Control of Ultracold Collisions with Chirped Light: Direction Matters

Abstract

We demonstrate the ability to coherently control ultracold atomic Rb collisions using frequency-chirped light on the nanosecond time scale. For certain center frequencies of the chirp, the rate of inelastic trap-loss collisions induced by negatively chirped light is dramatically suppressed compared to the case of a positive chirp. We attribute this to a fundamental asymmetry in the system: an excited wavepacket always moves inward on the attractive molecular potential. For a positive chirp, the resonance condition moves outward in time, while for a negative chirp, it moves inward, in the same direction as the excited wavepacket; this allows multiple interactions between the wavepacket and the light, enabling the wavepacket to be returned coherently to the ground state. Classical and quantum calculations support this interpretation.

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• Photoassociation and coherent transient dynamics in the interaction of ultracold rubidium atoms with shaped femtosecond pulses - II. Theory
• Coherent control of ultracold 85Rb trap-loss collisions with nonlinearly frequency-chirped light
• Nanosecond Pulse Shaping with Fiber-Based Electro-Optical Modulators and a Double-Pass Tapered Amplifier
• Production of Ultracold Molecules with Chirped Nanosecond Pulses: Evidence for Coherent Effects
• Perspectives for coherent optical formation of strontium molecules in their electronic ground state
• The dynamical hole in ultrafast photoassociation: analysis of the compression effect
• CEP-Controlled Molecular Dissociation by Ultrashort Chirped Laser Pulses
• Amplification of arbitrary frequency chirps of pulsed light on nanosecond timescales