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Physical Review A

Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage in molecules: The effects of background states

Taiwang Cheng, Hariyanto Darmawan, Alex Brown

Published Jan 11, 2007• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The effects of a background state, or states, on stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) processes are investigated. The study is based on a realistic model of the laser-assisted $\mathrm{HCN}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\mathrm{HNC}$ isomerization process. While the high density of states in the energy regime above the isomerization barrier plays an important role, the strong variation of the transition dipole moments connecting these states with the localized HCN and HNC states is shown to be more significant in determining the success or failure of the STIRAP process. Therefore, care must be taken when proposing the use of STIRAP-based schemes to control molecular excitation especially when control is justified via few-level models.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.75.013411

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Physical Review A•Feb 17, 2009•44 citations
The effects of a background state, or states, on stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) processes are investigated. The study is based on a realistic model of the laser-assisted HCN\ensuremath→HNC\mathrm{HCN}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\mathrm{HNC}HCN\ensuremath→HNC isomerization process. While the high density of states in the energy regime above the isomerization barrier plays an important role, the strong variation of the transition dipole moments connecting these states with the localized HCN and HNC states is shown to be more significant in determining the success or failure of the STIRAP process. Therefore, care must be taken when proposing the use of STIRAP-based schemes to control molecular excitation especially when control is justified via few-level models.
The rovibrational dynamics of an extended ladder stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) system through permanent dipole moment transitions is investigated theoretically using the time-dependent quantum-wave-packet method for the ground electronic state of the HF molecule. The calculated results show that nearly 100% of the population can be transferred to the target state through (1+2), (1+3), and (2+2) STIRAP schemes. By choosing a suitable excitation pathway, the effects of the background states on the final population of the target state can be removed. For the multiphoton STIRAP process, the one-photon overtone pump scheme is more efficient than the two-photon pump scheme in controlling the population transfer to the target state.
The rovibrational dynamics of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) through permanent dipole moment transitions are investigated theoretically using a time-dependent quantum wave packet method for the ground electronic state of an HF molecule. The two basic STIRAP processes, $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ and ladder systems, are simulated. The calculated results show that nearly 100100%100 of the population can be transferred to the target state. Besides the interested transitions, the pulses can induce other transitions which affect the dynamics of STIRAP. The final populations of the initial and target states depend on delay time.
This paper presents a systematic numerical investigation of background state participation in STIRAP (stimulated Raman-adiabatic passage) population transfer among vibrational states, focusing on the consequences for the robustness of the method. The simulations, which are performed over extended grids in the parameter space of the Stokes- and pump pulses (frequencies, field strengths, and pulse lengths), involve hierarchies of (3 + N)-level systems of increasing complexity, ranging from the standard three-level STIRAP setup, (N = 0) in Λ-configuration, up to N = 446. A strongly coupled three-level core system is selected from the full Hamiltonian of the double-well HCN∕HNC system, and the couplings connecting this core system to the remaining states are (re-) parameterized in different ways, from very weak to very strong. The systems so obtained represent a three-level system embedded in various ways in webs of cross-linked vibrational background states and incorporate typical molecular properties. We first summarize essential properties of population transfer in the standard three-level system and quantify the robustness of the method and its dependence on the pulse parameters. Against these reference results, we present results obtained for four (3 + 446)-level systems and several subsystems. For pulse lengths of at most few picoseconds the intrinsic robustness of STIRAP with respect to variations in the field strength disappears as soon as the largest core-background couplings exceed about one tenth of the STIRAP couplings. In such cases robustness with respect to variations in the field strength is entirely lost, since at higher field strengths, except for irregularly spaced narrow frequency ranges, transfer probabilities are strongly reduced. STIRAP-like population transfer is maintained, with some restrictions, at low field strengths near the onset of adiabatic transfer. The suppression of STIRAP is traced back to different mechanisms based on a plentitude of single- and multiphoton transitions to background states, which at the high field strengths characteristic for STIRAP proceed readily even along weakly coupled pathways.
We report studies of state-to-state vibrational energy transfer in an isolated polyatomic molecule driven by combined stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) and counter-diabatic fields (CDFs). The goal of these studies is development of a method for improving the efficiency of level-to-level population transfer under conditions that degrade the efficiency of conventional STIRAP-generated population transfer. The vehicles for our studies are selective population of one of a pair of near-degenerate states in nonrotating SCCl 2 and enhancing the yield of nonrotating HNC in the HCN → HNC isomerization reaction. The efficiency of the population transfer within a subset of states embedded in a manifold of states is examined for the cases in which the transition dipole moments between the initial and target states are much smaller than and comparable to the transition dipole moments between background states and for the case in which the subset states have large transition dipole moments with the background states. We show that, in a subset of states that is coupled to background states, a combination of STIRAP fields and CDFs that do not individually generate processes that are competitive with the desired population transfer can generate population transfer efficiency greater than can ordinary STIRAP with field strength and/or pulse duration similarly restricted and that the exact CDF for an isolated three-level system is a useful approximation to the exact CDF for three- and five-state systems embedded in background states. We report a study of the stability of the STIRAP and approximate CDF control protocol to variation of the CDF intensity, the relative phase between the STIRAP and CDFs, and the pulse duration.
We use a 28-level system consisting of the vibrational bend states of the HCN/HNC system as a model system for the investigation of population transfer across the isomerization barrier using counterintuitively ordered multiphoton (MP) laser pulses. This (m+n)-STIRAP (stimulated Raman-adiabatic passage) arrangement with m pump- and n Stokes-photons is found to be capable of driving HCN→HNC transition states selectively and in a robust manner, despite the presence of near-degenerate parallel processes of different photonicities. Employing Gaussian pulses with widths of 80 ps, the process of highest photonicity we demonstrate is (4+6)-STIRAP, and we investigate systematically the robustness against variations in pulse amplitudes and frequencies for all parallel processes with m=2 and 3, and n=1–6. We discuss the conditions under which selective population transfer is obtained. We also compare with (1+1)-STIRAP using overtone transitions to drive the same state-specific processes and conclude that the few-step sequential MP-STIRAP isomerization is a feasible alternative to the sequential (1+1)-STIRAP based method proposed by Kurkal and Rice [J. Phys. Chem. B 105, 6488 (2001)].
We explore theoretically the rovibrational dynamics of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in molecular electronic states including both the rotational and the vibrational degrees of freedom, with the LiH molecule as an example. By using a pure rovibrational state as initial state, we find that, under the condition of two-photon resonance, an efficient rovibrational population transfer can be achieved via STIRAP in molecular electronic states and the desired target state can be selected by adjusting laser-pulse parameters. Besides the interested rovibrational states, however, some unwanted rovibrational states may affect population transfer process, especially while the two-photon detuning is taken into account. By inspecting the evolution process of wave packet, we can easily search these unwanted rovibrational states and study their influences. Moreover, the effect of rotational temperature on the population transfer process is discussed using thermal mixed state as initial state.