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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Subpicosecond transient excitation of atomic vapor and the measurement of optical phase

Joshua E. Rothenberg, D. Grischkowsky

Published Oct 1, 1986• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The transient behavior of a frequency-swept optical pulse transmitted through a resonant vapor cell is observed by an optical sampling technique with ~20-fsec time resolution. The observed 200-fsec transients are the fastest intensity sampling measurement ever made on an atomic vapor and provide a precise determination of the time-varying phase of the pulse. The observed phase shows deviations from a linear frequency sweep, which may account for previous limits on pulse compression.

DOI
10.1364/josab.3.001235

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The Journal of Chemical Physics•Apr 17, 2008•5 citations
The transient behavior of a frequency-swept optical pulse transmitted through a resonant vapor cell is observed by an optical sampling technique with ~20-fsec time resolution. The observed 200-fsec transients are the fastest intensity sampling measurement ever made on an atomic vapor and provide a precise determination of the time-varying phase of the pulse. The observed phase shows deviations from a linear frequency sweep, which may account for previous limits on pulse compression.
We demonstrate that frequency-chirped laser excitation pulses may be employed to generate coherent transient signals possessing the same temporal profile as a particular excitation pulse. In comparison with the short, fixedfrequency pulses used in previous studies of this effect, chirped pulses can be temporally longer, of lower intensity, and hence easier to generate. The experiment was performed on the 555.6-nm transition of vapor-phase atomic ytterbium, and pulse-shape information was stored in a coherence between excited-state Zeeman levels. A simple theoretical analysis of our results is presented.
Several groups1–4 have recently proposed a simple and powerful optical technique for obtaining ultrahigh time resolution, which is limited only by the coherence time of the excitation light rather than by the overall pulse duration. The present work reports an application of this technique to study the dephasing rates of the Na and Rb resonance lines perturbed by several atmospheres of argon gas. By comparison with traditional measurements, we demonstrate that relaxation processes occurring on time scales much shorter than the excitation pulse duration can indeed be accurately and unambiguously measured using the present technique.
An angled-beam, transient four-wave mixing experiment is described in which nanosecond-duration, broad-bandwidth excitation pulses are employed to measure picosecond collisional dephasing and subpicosecond interference beats in atomic Rb vapor. The 7.2-THz interference beat, which corresponds to a 237 cm(-1) Rb fine-structure splitting, is apparently the fastest material-specific beat yet observed. We discuss practical limitations on the time resolution attainable with this technique and propose means of circumventing them by using broad-bandwidth collinear excitation beams and an angled narrow-bandwidth probe.
We examine the propagation of shaped (amplitude- and frequency-modulated) ultrafast laser pulses through optically dense rubidium vapor. Pulse reshaping, stimulated emission dynamics, and residual electronic excitation all strongly depend on the laser pulse shape. For example, frequency swept pulses, which produce adiabatic passage in the optically thin limit (independent of the sign of the frequency sweep), behave unexpectedly in optically dense samples. Paraxial Maxwell optical Bloch equations can model our ultrafast pulse propagation results well and provide insight.