Using the characteristic of small energy difference between two high Rydberg states, we theoretically investigate the carrier envelope phase (CEP) effect in a bound-bound transition of an atom in a low-frequency long laser pulse with tens of optical cycles. Particularly, we first prepare a Rydberg state of a hydrogen-like atom by a laser field with the resonant frequency between this state and the ground state. Then by using a low-frequency long laser pulse interacting with this Rydberg atom, we calculate the population of another Rydberg state nearby this Rydberg state at the end of the laser pulse and find that the population changes dramatically with the CEP of the low-frequency pulse. This CEP effect is attributed to the interference between the positive-frequency and negative-frequency components in one-photon transition. These results may provide a method to measure the CEP value of a long laser pulse with low frequency.
We investigate numerically with Hylleraas coordinates the frequency dependence of the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) effect on bound-bound transitions of helium induced by an ultrashort laser pulse of a few cycles. We find that the CEP effect is very sensitive to the carrier frequency of the laser pulse, occurring regularly even at far-off-resonance frequencies. By analyzing a two-level model, we find that the CEP effect can be attributed to the quantum interference between neighboring multiphoton transition pathways, which is made possible by the broadened spectrum of the ultrashort laser pulse. A general picture is developed along this line to understand the sensitivity of the CEP effect to the laser's carrier frequency. Multilevel influence on the CEP effect is also discussed.
We study the carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) effect of a few-cycle laser pulse on bound-bound transitions in helium in the high-frequency region. Specifically, for the one-photon transition from the
11S to the
21P state, the CEP effect increases as the frequency increases; while for the two-photon transition from the
11S to the
31D state, the CEP effect shows a peak at a frequency that is almost equal to the energy difference between the
11S and
31D states. By using a four-level model, we find that the CEP effect on the
11S--
21P transition is attributed to the quantum interference between the positive-frequency and negative-frequency subpaths of the one-photon transition; whereas the CEP effect on the
11S--
31D transition is attributed to the interference between the sum-frequency and difference-frequency components of the two-photon transition. These results indicate that the CEP effect can occur not only due to the interference between neighboring multiphoton-transition paths, but also due to the interference between two components inside one multiphoton-transition path. Therefore, this work, together with our previous work for the low-frequency region [Peng et al., Phys. Rev. A 82, 053407 (2010)], may provide a complete picture of the CEP effect on bound-bound transitions in the whole range of laser frequency.
Weak-field coherent phase control of atomic non-resonant multiphoton excitation induced by shaped femtosecond pulses is studied theoretically in the single-cycle regime. The carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of the pulse, which in the multi-cycle regime does not play any control role, is shown here to be a new effective control parameter that its effect is highly sensitive to the spectral position of the ultrabroad spectrum. Rationally chosen position of the ultrabroadband spectrum coherently induces several groups of multiphoton transitions from the ground state to the excited state of the system: transitions involving only absorbed photons as well as Raman transitions involving both absorbed and emitted photons. The intra-group interference is controlled by the relative spectral phase of the different frequency components of the pulse, while the inter-group interference is controlled jointly by the CEP and the relative spectral phase. Specifically, non-resonant two- and three-photon excitation is studied in a simple model system within the perturbative frequency-domain framework. The developed intuition is then applied to weak-field multiphoton excitation of atomic cesium (Cs), where the simplified model is verified by non-perturbative numerical solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. We expect this work to serve as a basis for a new line of femtosecond coherent control experiments.