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Physical Review A

Strong-field adiabatic passage in the continuum: Electromagnetically induced transparency and stimulated Raman adiabatic passage

A. Eilam, M. Shapiro

Published Jan 27, 2012• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a fully quantum-mechanical theory of the mutual light-matter effects when two laser pulses interact with three discrete states coupled to a (quasi)continuum. Our formulation uses a single set of equations to describe the time dependence of the discrete and continuum populations, as well as pulse propagation in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) situations, for both weak and strong laser pulses. The theory gives a mechanistic picture of the ``slowing down of light'' and the state of spontaneously emitted photons during this process. Surprising features regarding the time dependence of material and radiative transients as well as limitations on quantum light storage and retrieval are unraveled.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.85.012520

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Physical Review A•Sep 10, 2014•19 citations
We present a fully quantum-mechanical theory of the mutual light-matter effects when two laser pulses interact with three discrete states coupled to a (quasi)continuum. Our formulation uses a single set of equations to describe the time dependence of the discrete and continuum populations, as well as pulse propagation in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) situations, for both weak and strong laser pulses. The theory gives a mechanistic picture of the ``slowing down of light'' and the state of spontaneously emitted photons during this process. Surprising features regarding the time dependence of material and radiative transients as well as limitations on quantum light storage and retrieval are unraveled.
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.
The preparation of an optically dense ensemble of three- level systems in dark states of the interaction with coherent radiation is discussed. It is shown that methods involving spontaneous emissions of photons such as Raman optical pumping fail to work beyond a critical density due to multiple scattering and trapping of these photons and the associated decay of the dark state(s). In optically thick media coherent-state preparation is only possible by entirely coherent means such as stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP). It is shown that STIRAP is the underlying physical mechanism for electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT).
The prospect of employing the stimulated Raman adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) technique under the influence of pure dephasing is explored. A general analysis of how decoherence influences the performance of STIRAP is provided. Starting from a general and fully quantum-mechanical system–bath Hamiltonian, we derive a quantum master equation (QME) that describes the reduced dynamics of a dissipative STIRAP system. The derivation is based on the standard assumptions of (1) weak system–bath coupling; (2) Markovity, in the sense that the relaxation times are long in comparison to the bath correlation time, τc; and (3) weak field–matter interaction, in the sense that the Rabi period of the driving laser fields, Ω−1, is longer than τc. The dissipative term in this QME is the same as it would have been in the absence of the driving fields, because of the assumption of weak field–matter interaction. This type of uncontrollable dephasing is seen to diminish the efficiency of STIRAP, although the actual loss strongly depends on the specific dephasing mechanism. We also derive a more general QME, which is applicable to driving fields of arbitrary intensity. The dissipative term in the new QME is explicitly dependent on the driving fields, and therefore controllable. Intense fields are shown to effectively slow down the dephasing when Ωτc>1, which suggests that it may be possible to use STIRAP in order to transfer population between the quantum states of a solute molecule embedded in a solvent.
Here we present a microscopic model that describes the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) phenomenon in the multiple-scattering regime. We consider an ensemble of cold three-level atoms, in a $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ configuration, scattering a probe and a control field to the vacuum modes of the electromagnetic field. By first considering a scalar description of the scattering, we show that the light-mediated long-range interactions that emerge between the dipoles narrow the EIT transparency window for increasing densities and sample sizes. For a vectorial description, we demonstrate that near-field interacting terms can critically affect the atomic population transfer in the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP). This result points out that standard STIRAP-based quantum memories in cold-atomic ensembles would not reach high enough efficiencies for quantum information processing applications even in dilute regimes.
Here we present a microscopic model that describes the Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) phenomenon in the multiple scattering regime. We consider an ensembles of cold three-level atoms, in a Λ\LambdaΛ configuration, scattering a probe and a control field to the vacuum modes of the electromagnetic field. By first considering a scalar description of the scattering, we show that the light-mediated long-range interactions that emerge between the dipoles narrow the EIT transparency window for increasing densities and sample sizes. For a vectorial description, we demonstrate that near-field interacting terms can critically affect the atomic population transfer in the Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP). This result points out that standard STIRAP-based quantum memories in dense and cold atomic ensembles would not reach efficiency high enough for quantum information processing applications.
This paper begins with the premise that stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) from one state to another by coupling to an intermediate state necessarily requires some population of that intermediate state. The usual view of the process depends on having no population in the intermediate state, but a simple argument from the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation shows that such adiabatic transfer cannot occur. From another perspective, removing the time dependence of the Hamiltonian by making the rotating frame transformation cancels the optical frequency oscillations but does not account for the envelopes of the pulses commonly used for STIRAP. By assuming a small but finite intermediate state amplitude ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{1}$ in the wave function, the propagator for the evolution between initial and final states is derived. Applying the propagator to the initial state produces a single compact formula for the final intermediate-state population that is readily evaluated for an arbitrary choice of laser pulse parameters. Several plots for various experimental conditions show that under the conditions normally used for STIRAP experiments the effects are typically a few percent or less, but in the end this effect puts an ultimate limit on total efficiency.