Protecting and accelerating adiabatic passage with time-delayed pulse sequences

TL;DR

This study demonstrates how time-delayed femtosecond pulses can enhance adiabatic passage in molecular systems, avoiding saturation, accelerating transitions, and enabling state selectivity, which advances ultrafast quantum control techniques.

Contribution

It introduces novel pulse sequencing strategies to improve adiabatic passage efficiency and robustness in molecular systems using numerical simulations.

Findings

Avoided saturation and Rabi oscillations with time-delayed pulses

Accelerated adiabatic passage using vibrational coherence

Achieved full state-selective transitions with broadband pulses

Abstract

Using numerical simulations of two-photon electronic absorption with femtosecond pulses in Na$_2$ we show that: i) it is possible to avoid the characteristic saturation or dumped Rabi oscillations in the yield of absorption by time-delaying the laser pulses; ii) it is possible to accelerate the onset of adiabatic passage by using the vibrational coherence starting in a wave packet; and iii) it is possible to prepare the initial wave packet in order to achieve full state-selective transitions with broadband pulses. The findings can be used, for instance, to achieve ultrafast adiabatic passage by light-induced potentials and understand its intrinsic robustness.