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Physical Review A

Coherent transport of single atoms in optical lattices

Wolfgang Merkel, Holger Mack, Matthias Freyberger, Victor V. Kozlov, Wolfgang P. Schleich, Bruce W. Shore

Published Mar 28, 2007• 12 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We describe a technique for transferring a two-level atom between two adjacent potential wells of an optical lattice, using pairs of pump and Stokes pulses, each resonantly coupling the same pair of internal atomic states to form a Raman transition. Starting from a vibrational eigenstate of one well the atom slowly moves under the action of the pulse pair, to the vibrational eigenstate with the same quantum number in the neighboring well. The transfer takes place in two stages: A conventional stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) technique, in which Stokes precedes pump pulse, is followed by a pulse sequence where pump precedes Stokes and with an inverted sign of the Stokes envelope. In the first step the atom is accelerated toward the adjacent well and in the second step decelerated to the initial vibrational energy. The STIRAP technique avoids the introduction of stochastic motion caused by spontaneous emission from the excited internal atomic state.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.75.033420

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We describe a technique for transferring a two-level atom between two adjacent potential wells of an optical lattice, using pairs of pump and Stokes pulses, each resonantly coupling the same pair of internal atomic states to form a Raman transition. Starting from a vibrational eigenstate of one well the atom slowly moves under the action of the pulse pair, to the vibrational eigenstate with the same quantum number in the neighboring well. The transfer takes place in two stages: A conventional stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) technique, in which Stokes precedes pump pulse, is followed by a pulse sequence where pump precedes Stokes and with an inverted sign of the Stokes envelope. In the first step the atom is accelerated toward the adjacent well and in the second step decelerated to the initial vibrational energy. The STIRAP technique avoids the introduction of stochastic motion caused by spontaneous emission from the excited internal atomic state.
Summary form only given. Coherent conversion of an atomic to a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is a first step towards 'superchemistry', which is the atom optics analog of frequency conversion in nonlinear optics. A number of studies of this have shown that direct conversion via Raman photo-association appears feasible, based on stimulated free-bound and bound-bound transitions in the presence of two laser fields E/sup (1)/=E/sub 0//sup (1)/ cos(/spl omega//sup (1)/t) and E/sup (2)/=E/sub 0//sup (2)/ cos(/spl omega//sup (2)/t). Here pairs of atoms from the two-atom continuum are transferred-via an excited bound molecular state-to a bound molecular state of lower energy. Raman photo-association allows coupling to a single molecular state, which can be selected by the Raman laser frequencies /spl omega//sup (1)/ and /spl omega//sup (2)/. However, practical calculations using available lasers and transitions indicate that coherent transfer is often limited by spontaneous emission from the intermediate molecular excited electronic state. A possible route towards minimizing losses and decoherence from spontaneous emission is to use the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) method (Drummond et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. vol. 81, p. 3055, 1998) in which a counter-intuitive pulse sequence is used where the first input pulse couples the molecular levels, even when there are no molecules present.
The authors discuss the technique of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), a method of using partially overlapping pulses (from pump and Stokes lasers) to produce complete population transfer between two quantum states of an atom or molecule. The procedure relies on the initial creation of a coherence (a population-trapping state) with subsequent adiabatic evolution. The authors present the basic theory, with some extensions, and then describe examples of experimental utilization. They note some applications of the technique not only to preparation of selected states for reaction studies, but also to quantum optics and atom optics.
We introduce a method for the coherent acceleration of atoms trapped in an optical lattice, using the well-known model for stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP). Specifically, we show that small harmonic modulations of the optical lattice amplitude, with frequencies tuned to the eigenvalue spacings of three ``unperturbed'' eigenstates, reveals a three-state STIRAP subsystem. We use this model to realize an experimentally achievable method for transferring trapped atoms from stationary to motional eigenstates.
Coherent manipulation of quantum states is of crucial importance in accurate control of a quantum system. A fundamental goal is coherently transferring the population of a desired state with near-unit fidelity. For this purpose, we theoretically demonstrate a novel coherent double-stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in a three-level Λ-type system for realizing the switch of unequal initial preparations on two ground states. This operation uses a single optical pulse sequence accomplishing both bright-STIRAP and dark-STIRAP processes, in which the intermediate-level detuning and the pulse delay must be given an optimal adjustment. Besides, owing to the imperfection of double-STIRAP transition, the sensitivity of the switch fidelity with respect to the spontaneous loss from the intermediate state, to the pulse amplitude and to the population difference, is also discussed. This work suggests a simple and experimentally feasible all-optical approach to switch a superposition quantum state, serving as one-step closer to the goal of coherent manipulation of quantum systems.
We have considered a coherent population transfer to a higher excited singlet state ( S2 ) of molecules with anomalous fluorescence in molecular assemblies (e.g., a dense medium). A direct excitation to S2 requires light in the UV region. Because of this, the transition is conveniently realized by a two-step (two-photon) process: S0→S1→S2 , where transitions S0→S1 and S1→S2 correspond to the optical region. We have shown that efficient stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in the ladder configuration can be realized in this case, using suitably chirped pulses, to compensate a change of the two-photon transition frequency in time, induced by the pulses themselves, due to near dipole-dipole interactions. We have provided a reduced state formulation of the optical control process. Chirping the “pump” pulse that excites transition S0→S1 is nonequivalent to chirping the “Stokes” pulse that excites transition S1→S2 , with respect to the population of the intermediate state ( S1 ) in the pulse nonadiabatic regime. We have also shown that with suitably chirped pulses, efficient STIRAP still persists even for a rather large decay of the intermediate state.
We propose a scheme for creating coherent atomic superposition states via the technique of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in a Λ-type system where final states are composed of manifold of levels and the intermediate levels could be more than one level. If the pump pulses and Stokes pulses are kept in the same order of ordinary STIRAP, through the control the delay time between the Stokes pulses and pump pulse, we could create arbitrary superposition states in the manifold of levels.