Experimental observation of carrier-envelope phase effects by multicycle pulses

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) influences multi-photon atomic transitions using multicycle pulses, demonstrating experimental control over phase-dependent processes in atomic systems.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental and theoretical analysis of CEP effects on multi-cycle pulses affecting atomic state transitions, expanding CEP control to longer pulse durations.

Findings

CEP significantly affects multi-photon transition probabilities

Longer pulses enable more precise CEP control

The scheme allows phase control without pulse duration limitations

Abstract

We present an experimental and theoretical study of carrier-envelope phase (CEP) effects on the population transfer between two bound atomic states interacting with pulses consisting of many cycles. Using intense radio-frequency pulse with Rabi frequency of the order of the atomic transition frequency, we investigated the influence of CEP on the control of phase dependent multi-photon transitions between the Zeeman sub-levels of the ground state of $^{87}$Rb. Our scheme has no limitation on the duration of the pulses. Extending the CEP control to longer pulses creates interesting possibilities to generate pulses with accuracy that is better then the period of optical oscillations.