Coherent control of population transfer between vibrational states in an optical lattice via two-path quantum interference

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method for coherently controlling population transfer between vibrational states in an optical lattice using quantum interference, significantly improving transition selectivity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interference-based control technique employing phase and amplitude modulation to manipulate vibrational state transitions in optical lattices.

Findings

Achieved a 3.5-fold improvement in transition branching ratio.

Controlled population transfer via interference between one- and two-phonon transitions.

Potential applications in reducing leakage errors in quantum information systems.

Abstract

We demonstrate coherent control of population transfer between vibrational states in an optical lattice by using interference between a one-phonon transition at $2\omega$ and a two-phonon transition at $\omega$. The $\omega$ and $2\omega$ transitions are driven by phase- and amplitude-modulation of the lattice laser beams, respectively. By varying the relative phase between these two pathways, we control the branching ratio of transitions to the first excited state and to the higher states. Our best result shows an improvement of the branching ratio by a factor of 3.5$\pm$0.7. Such quantum control techniques may find broad application in suppressing leakage errors in a variety of quantum information architectures.