Title: Coherent Population Transfer Among States by Sub-Picosecond, Half-Cycle Pulses

N.E. Tielking and R.R. Jones

Abstract:

Ultra-short, unipolar electric field pulses have been used to coherently redistribute population between Rydberg states in Sodium. The population in several Rydberg states is recorded simultaneously as a function of peak field. In addition, two temporally separated pulses have been used to interferometrically characterize the redistribution process. In the lowest fields, the experimental results are in agreement with the predictions of lowest order pertubation theory. At slightly higher fields, still well below the ionization threshold, the redistribution process becomes non- perturbative, and a numerical integration of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation must be used to achieve qualitative agreement between theory and experiment.

Status: Published, Phys. Rev. A 52, 1371 (1995)
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