Making Distinct Dynamical Systems Appear Spectrally Identical

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that tailored laser pulses can make different dynamical systems produce indistinguishable optical spectra, challenging the notion that spectra alone can identify systems.

Contribution

It introduces a method to design driving fields that induce identical optical responses across diverse systems, revealing new flexibilities in nonlinear optics.

Findings

Different systems can be made spectrally identical with tailored pulses

Optical spectra alone are insufficient to characterize systems

The approach can be used to design materials with specific optical properties

Abstract

We show that a laser pulse can always be found that induces a desired optical response from an arbitrary dynamical system. As illustrations, driving fields are computed to induce the same optical response from a variety of distinct systems (open and closed, quantum and classical). As a result, the observed induced dipolar spectra without detailed information on the driving field is not sufficient to characterize atomic and molecular systems. The formulation may also be applied to design materials with specified optical characteristics. These findings reveal unexplored flexibilities of nonlinear optics.