© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

Terms Privacy Legal Notice

arXiv:2112.13768 · Physical Review A

Optimized pulses for population transfer via laser-induced continuum structures

Dionisis Stefanatos, Emmanuel Paspalakis

Published Sep 1, 2021• 1 citation

Abstract

We use optimal control in order to find the optimal shapes of pulses maximizing the population transfer between two bound states which are coupled via a continuum of states. We find that the optimal bounded controls acquire the bang-interior and interior-bang form, with the bang part corresponding to the maximum allowed control value and the interior part to values between zero and the maximum. Then we use numerical optimal control to obtain the switching times and the interior control values. We compare our results with those obtained using Gaussian stimulated Raman adiabatic passage pulses and find that the optimal method performs better, with the extent of improvement depending on the effective two-photon detuning and the size of incoherent losses. When we consider effective two-photon resonance, the improvement is more dramatic for larger incoherent losses, while when we take into account the effective two-photon detuning, the improvement is better for smaller incoherent losses. We also obtain how the transfer efficiency increases with increasing absolute value of the Fano factor. The present work is expected to find application in areas where the population transfer between two bound states through a continuum structure plays an important role, for example coherence effects, like population trapping and electromagnetically induced transparency, optical analogs for light waves propagating in waveguide-based photonic structures, and qubits coupled via a continuum of bosonic or waveguide modes.

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.104.033101

Related papers

Transfer of light waves in optical waveguides via a continuum

Stefano Longhi

Classical wave optical analogs of coherent population transfer via a continuum, recently demonstrated for laser-driven atoms and molecules in the atomic physics context, are theoretically proposed for light waves propagating in waveguide-based photonic structures. In particular, it is shown that exploitation of the optical analogs of two-photon Rabi oscillations and stimulated Raman adiabatic passage via continuous states enables efficient transfer of light waves between two channel optical waveguides side coupled to a slab waveguide.

Physical Review A•Jul 10, 2008•42 citations

Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage into continuum

Andon A. Rangelov, Nikolay V. Vitanov, E. Arimondo

We propose a technique which produces nearly complete ionization of the population of a discrete state coupled to a continuum by a two-photon transition via a lossy intermediate state whose lifetime is much shorter than the interaction duration. We show that using counterintuitively ordered pulses, as in stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), wherein the pulse coupling the intermediate state to the continuum precedes and partly overlaps the pulse coupling the initial and intermediate states, greatly increases the ionization signal and strongly reduces the population loss due to spontaneous emission through the lossy state. For strong spontaneous emission from that state, however, the ionization is never complete because the dark state required for STIRAP does not exist. We demonstrate that this drawback can be eliminated almost completely by creating a laser-induced continuum structure (LICS) by embedding a third discrete state into the continuum with a third control laser. This LICS introduces some coherence into the continuum, which enables a STIRAP-like population transfer into the continuum. A highly accurate analytic description is developed and numerical results are presented for Gaussian pulse shapes.

arXiv:1010.1228•Physical Review A•Oct 12, 2007•13 citations

Population transfer via a dissipative structural continuum

Wei Huang, Shan Yin, Baohua Zhu +2 more

We propose a model to study quantum population transfer via a structural continuum. The model is composed of two spins which are coupled to two bosonic modes separately by two control pulses, and the two bosonic modes are coupled to a common structural continuum. We show that efficient population transfer can be achieved between the two spins by using a multilevel stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) across the continuum, which we refer to as straddle STIRAP via continuum. We also consider the stability of this model against different control parameters and show that efficient population transfer can be achieved even in the presence of a moderate dissipation.

arXiv:1909.08481•Physical Review A•Dec 30, 2019•13 citations

Collision-assisted electromagnetically induced control of coherent population transfer

Xihua Yang, Shi-Yao Zhu

The effect of the collisions on the control of coherent population transfer in a closed inverse $Y$-type four-level system driven by three laser fields is investigated with the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage technique. An arbitrary coherent superposition between the initial state and target state can be created either by varying the Rabi frequency of the control laser field or by tuning the one-photon detunings of the pump and Stokes laser fields. When the three laser fields with nearly equal peak Rabi frequencies are each tuned to resonance with the respective transitions, the low transfer efficiency due to the nonadiabatic coupling between two degenerate adiabatic states could be enhanced dramatically with the increase of the collision-induced coherence decay rates to the value nearly comparable to the Rabi frequency of the control field. The enhanced transfer efficiency results from the collision-controlled electromagnetically induced transparency in the $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type three-level subsystem and electromagnetically induced absorption in the ladder-type three-level subsystem of the four-level system.

Physical Review A•Aug 11, 2008•19 citations

Optimization of multistate STIRAP by pulse shaping

Julian K. Dimitrov, Nikolay V. Vitanov

We propose a pulse-shaping method for improving population transfer in multistate stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) with nearest-neighbour couplings only. The method extends the quasiparallel-eigenenergy approach, previously used for two- and three-state systems, to multistate chains without introducing additional shortcut fields. The pump and Stokes fields are shaped so that the eigenenergies closest to the dark state remain nearly parallel to it during the central part of the interaction, where nonadiabatic transitions are most likely to occur. We derive analytic prescriptions for the required pulse shapes and apply them to five-, seven-, and nine-state chains formed by magnetic sublevels of degenerate manifolds with angular momenta $J_g\rightarrow J_e=J_g$ and $J_g\rightarrow J_e=J_g-1$ driven by a pair of right- and left-circularly polarized pulses. Numerical simulations show that the optimized pulses can reduce the population transfer error by several orders of magnitude compared to standard Gaussian pulses. The same shapes also improve robustness against variations of the peak Rabi frequency, the single-photon detuning, and the multiphoton detuning. The comparison between the two angular-momentum families shows that the $J_g\rightarrow J_g$ chains are generally more favourable, because their Clebsch-Gordan coefficients keep the relevant bright-state gap larger in the region where the dark state changes most rapidly. Finally, simulations with spontaneous emission show that the optimized resonant pulses remain advantageous in the lossy regime as well.

quant-pharXiv:2607.15915•Physical Review A•Jul 20, 2026•0 citations

Coherent population trapping via a continuum with a train of ultrashort pulses

Elena Kuznetsova, Roman L. Kolesov, Olga A. Kocharovskaya

We consider the coherent population trapping effect with a train of ultrashort pulses in a $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type system with two bound states and a continuum replacing the upper state. Population transfer to the continuum can be totally suppressed provided that the splitting between the bound states is a multiple of the pulse repetition rate. Compared to the traditional case with only two laser fields coupling the bound states to the continuum, CPT with a pulse train allows one to avoid incoherent population losses due to interaction of the fields with ``wrong'' transitions, which results in only partial suppression of ionization. A method of suppression of excited-state absorption of pumping radiation in laser crystals, with pumping in the form of the pulse train, is proposed. As a particular example pumping dynamics of a ${\mathrm{Ti}}^{3+}:{\mathrm{YAlO}}_{3}$ crystal using this technique is numerically analyzed.

Physical Review A•Sep 8, 2006•5 citations

We use optimal control in order to find the optimal shapes of pulses maximizing the population transfer between two bound states which are coupled via a continuum of states. We find that the optimal bounded controls acquire the bang-interior and interior-bang form, with the bang part corresponding to the maximum allowed control value and the interior part to values between zero and the maximum. Then we use numerical optimal control to obtain the switching times and the interior control values. We compare our results with those obtained using Gaussian stimulated Raman adiabatic passage pulses and find that the optimal method performs better, with the extent of improvement depending on the effective two-photon detuning and the size of incoherent losses. When we consider effective two-photon resonance, the improvement is more dramatic for larger incoherent losses, while when we take into account the effective two-photon detuning, the improvement is better for smaller incoherent losses. We also obtain how the transfer efficiency increases with increasing absolute value of the Fano factor. The present work is expected to find application in areas where the population transfer between two bound states through a continuum structure plays an important role, for example coherence effects, like population trapping and electromagnetically induced transparency, optical analogs for light waves propagating in waveguide-based photonic structures, and qubits coupled via a continuum of bosonic or waveguide modes.

Classical wave optical analogs of coherent population transfer via a continuum, recently demonstrated for laser-driven atoms and molecules in the atomic physics context, are theoretically proposed for light waves propagating in waveguide-based photonic structures. In particular, it is shown that exploitation of the optical analogs of two-photon Rabi oscillations and stimulated Raman adiabatic passage via continuous states enables efficient transfer of light waves between two channel optical waveguides side coupled to a slab waveguide.

We propose a technique which produces nearly complete ionization of the population of a discrete state coupled to a continuum by a two-photon transition via a lossy intermediate state whose lifetime is much shorter than the interaction duration. We show that using counterintuitively ordered pulses, as in stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), wherein the pulse coupling the intermediate state to the continuum precedes and partly overlaps the pulse coupling the initial and intermediate states, greatly increases the ionization signal and strongly reduces the population loss due to spontaneous emission through the lossy state. For strong spontaneous emission from that state, however, the ionization is never complete because the dark state required for STIRAP does not exist. We demonstrate that this drawback can be eliminated almost completely by creating a laser-induced continuum structure (LICS) by embedding a third discrete state into the continuum with a third control laser. This LICS introduces some coherence into the continuum, which enables a STIRAP-like population transfer into the continuum. A highly accurate analytic description is developed and numerical results are presented for Gaussian pulse shapes.

We propose a model to study quantum population transfer via a structural continuum. The model is composed of two spins which are coupled to two bosonic modes separately by two control pulses, and the two bosonic modes are coupled to a common structural continuum. We show that efficient population transfer can be achieved between the two spins by using a multilevel stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) across the continuum, which we refer to as straddle STIRAP via continuum. We also consider the stability of this model against different control parameters and show that efficient population transfer can be achieved even in the presence of a moderate dissipation.

The effect of the collisions on the control of coherent population transfer in a closed inverse

Y

-type four-level system driven by three laser fields is investigated with the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage technique. An arbitrary coherent superposition between the initial state and target state can be created either by varying the Rabi frequency of the control laser field or by tuning the one-photon detunings of the pump and Stokes laser fields. When the three laser fields with nearly equal peak Rabi frequencies are each tuned to resonance with the respective transitions, the low transfer efficiency due to the nonadiabatic coupling between two degenerate adiabatic states could be enhanced dramatically with the increase of the collision-induced coherence decay rates to the value nearly comparable to the Rabi frequency of the control field. The enhanced transfer efficiency results from the collision-controlled electromagnetically induced transparency in the $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type three-level subsystem and electromagnetically induced absorption in the ladder-type three-level subsystem of the four-level system.

We propose a pulse-shaping method for improving population transfer in multistate stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) with nearest-neighbour couplings only. The method extends the quasiparallel-eigenenergy approach, previously used for two- and three-state systems, to multistate chains without introducing additional shortcut fields. The pump and Stokes fields are shaped so that the eigenenergies closest to the dark state remain nearly parallel to it during the central part of the interaction, where nonadiabatic transitions are most likely to occur. We derive analytic prescriptions for the required pulse shapes and apply them to five-, seven-, and nine-state chains formed by magnetic sublevels of degenerate manifolds with angular momenta

J_g\rightarrow J_e=J_g

and

J_g\rightarrow J_e=J_g-1

driven by a pair of right- and left-circularly polarized pulses. Numerical simulations show that the optimized pulses can reduce the population transfer error by several orders of magnitude compared to standard Gaussian pulses. The same shapes also improve robustness against variations of the peak Rabi frequency, the single-photon detuning, and the multiphoton detuning. The comparison between the two angular-momentum families shows that the

J_g\rightarrow J_g

chains are generally more favourable, because their Clebsch-Gordan coefficients keep the relevant bright-state gap larger in the region where the dark state changes most rapidly. Finally, simulations with spontaneous emission show that the optimized resonant pulses remain advantageous in the lossy regime as well.

We consider the coherent population trapping effect with a train of ultrashort pulses in a $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type system with two bound states and a continuum replacing the upper state. Population transfer to the continuum can be totally suppressed provided that the splitting between the bound states is a multiple of the pulse repetition rate. Compared to the traditional case with only two laser fields coupling the bound states to the continuum, CPT with a pulse train allows one to avoid incoherent population losses due to interaction of the fields with ``wrong'' transitions, which results in only partial suppression of ionization. A method of suppression of excited-state absorption of pumping radiation in laser crystals, with pumping in the form of the pulse train, is proposed. As a particular example pumping dynamics of a

{\mathrm{Ti}}^{3+}:{\mathrm{YAlO}}_{3}

crystal using this technique is numerically analyzed.