The main goal of this PhD work is an experimental study of coherent excitation of atomic and molecular wavepackets, i.e. superpositions of many quantum eigenstates, by shaped femtosecond pulses. Approaches allowing nearly complete population transfer between quantum eigenstates were well studied in the past within the two level approximation. In this work we focus on adiabatic and non-adiabatic methods of population transfer beyond the two-level approximation. Excitation of multi-level target states is possible due to broad spectrum of an ultrashort pulse which contains frequencies needed for multiple transitions to different states in the final superposition. At the same time, the spectrum of an ultrashort pulse can be modified, or ``shaped'', in order to affect the excitation process and control the amplitudes in the final superposition. Both non-adiabatic and quasi-adiabatic methods were first implemented and studied in electronic wavepackets in alkali atoms. The non-adiabatic approach revealed features linked to the strong-field perturbations of the energy level structure of the quantum system. An adiabatic method was implemented for the first time on a femtosecond time scale, and was thoroughly characterized. The control over complex amplitudes in the target superposition was demonstrated as well as completeness of the population transfer. In the second part of this work, we focused on coherent control of rotational wavepackets in diatomic molecules. Rotational excitation by a periodic train of femtosecond pulses was investigated in the context of ``delta-kicked'' rotor - a paradigm system for studying quantum chaos, and the effect of quantum resonance was demonstrated for the first time in a system of true quantum rotors. Control of uni-directional molecular rotation was proposed and demonstrated with a novel ``chiral pulse train'' - a sequence of femtosecond pulses with polarization rotating from pulse to pulse by a predefined angle. All the developed techniques offer new tools in coherent control of atomic and molecular wavepackets on an ultrashort time scale.
The main goal of this PhD work is an experimental study of coherent excitation of atomic and molecular wavepackets, i.e. superpositions of many quantum eigenstates, by shaped femtosecond pulses. Approaches allowing nearly complete population transfer between quantum eigenstates were well studied in the past within the two level approximation. In this work we focus on adiabatic and non-adiabatic methods of population transfer beyond the two-level approximation. Excitation of multi-level target states is possible due to broad spectrum of an ultrashort pulse which contains frequencies needed for multiple transitions to different states in the final superposition. At the same time, the spectrum of an ultrashort pulse can be modified, or shaped'', in order to affect the excitation process and control the amplitudes in the final superposition. Both non-adiabatic and quasi-adiabatic methods were first implemented and studied in electronic wavepackets in alkali atoms. The non-adiabatic approach revealed features linked to the strong-field perturbations of the energy level structure of the quantum system. An adiabatic method was implemented for the first time on a femtosecond time scale, and was thoroughly characterized. The control over complex amplitudes in the target superposition was demonstrated as well as completeness of the population transfer. In the second part of this work, we focused on coherent control of rotational wavepackets in diatomic molecules. Rotational excitation by a periodic train of femtosecond pulses was investigated in the context of delta-kicked'' rotor - a paradigm system for studying quantum chaos, and the effect of quantum resonance was demonstrated for the first time in a system of true quantum rotors. Control of uni-directional molecular rotation was proposed and demonstrated with a novel ``chiral pulse train'' - a sequence of femtosecond pulses with polarization rotating from pulse to pulse by a predefined angle. All the developed techniques offer new tools in coherent control of atomic and molecular wavepackets on an ultrashort time scale.
This thesis is based upon the work published in the following two articles entitled: Robust Operation of a Universal Set of Logic Gates for Quantum Computation using Adiabatic Population Transfer between Molecular Levels [37], and Piecewise Adiabatic Passage with a Series of Femtosecond Pulses [54]. Both papers involve using the concept of a quantum control phenomenon, known as adiabatic passage in different manners, in order to achieve particular goals. In the first paper we present a robust construction of a set of logic gates operating on a system of qubits encoded in the ro-vibrational eigenstates of an Na₂ molecule using the optical Adiabatic Population Transfer (APT) method. We demonstrate the operation of a complete universal gate-set for quantum computation on a two-qubit system with gate fidelities approaching 99.99%. Like other APT-based processes, the method is robust against substantial fluctuations in the intensity of the laser pulse. Our construction is easily scalable to dealing with a larger number of qubits. The second line of research developed from the desire to merge the robustness of an adiabatic process, as presented in the previous paper, with the speed and additional level of control available by using pulse shaping techniques of broadband pulses. Therein we develop a method of executing complete population transfers between quantum states in a piecewise manner using a series of femtosecond laser pulses. The method can be applied to a large class of problems as it benefits from the high peak powers and large spectral bandwidths afforded by femtosecond pulses. The degree of population transfer is found to be robust to a wide variation in the absolute and relative intensities, durations, and time ordering of the pulses. The method is studied in detail for atomic sodium where piecewise adiabatic population transfer, as well as the induction of Ramsey-type interferences, is demonstrated.
In this work, the coherence properties of the matter is studied in the frame of photoassociation of ultracold alkali atoms by using short and ultrashort laser pulses. Ultracold can be described with temperatures below 100 microK. When energy approaches the ultracold regime, quantum properties of matter becomes visible. In this regime matter such as atoms and molecules show wave properties. Coherent control employs the wave properties of matter to steer a physical process toward a desired target. It can be implemented with coherent radiation such as laser light. In particular, femtosecond laser pulses can be shaped. They thus have become a standard tool for coherent control. Since matter shows its wave properties most clearly at ultralow temperatures, ultracold matter represents the perfect object for coherent control. In the other hand using incoherent fields on ultracold matter does not give us good opportunities to drive quantum properties of it. In this work, it is aimed to bring together ultracold and ultrafast regimes in the frame of photoassociation. Photoassociation, excitation of two colliding atoms by laser light creates very weakly bound molecules. In the first part of this study, femtosecond photoassociation experiments are simulated. In these experiments and simulations, the broad spectrum of the femtosecond pulses addressing both atomic and molecular transitions is manipulated in a way to prevent the atomic transitions and to promote the molecular transitions. Then the effect of chirp and the effect of additional phase to the pulse are examined. Excited and ground state population are monitored by carrying out quantum dynamical simulations. The driving ultrafast dipole dynamics are presented. The photoassociation rate is limited by the low initial atomic pair density at inter-nuclear separations where photoassociation is feasible. In the second part of this study, a new scheme is proposed in order to manage this low pair density by manipulating the shape resonances of the initial atom pair. A shape resonance which is a metastable state occurs when some part of the wavefunction of partial waves with J > 0 trapped by a rotational barrier shows a bound structure in the closer internuclear distances where the rest of it shows a scattering wavefunction behavior. Most of the shape resonances in alkaline and alkaline earth metals occur typically at temperatures of a few milli-Kelvin. Therefore, the thermal weight of a shape resonance at photoassociation temperatures is quite small. By applying a non-resonant laser to the system the energy of the resonant state is brought close to the energies those corresponding to the photoassociation temperatures. Thus, the thermal weight of a shape resonance is amplified and initial pair density is enhanced. This effect is studied in both adiabatic and non-adiabatic time scales with respect to the rotational period of the system, intensity effects on the resonance energy and lifetime are presented.
Ultrafast pulses allow observation of molecular dynamics with femtosecond time resolution through pump probe experiments. However, averaging over an ensemble of molecules tends to wash out phase sensitive information, necessary to probe quantum effects, due to the intrinsic inhomogeneity in molecular conformations, orientations and interactions that lead to unique potential energy landscapes for each molecule. It is therefore important to go beyond the ensemble average when looking at quantum dynamics of organic systems at room temperature, and resolve the behaviour of specific molecules on an individual basis. In this thesis, we show the creation, manipulation and observation of ultrafast coherent effects in single molecules at room temperature, and resolve a certain measure of environmental influence on the specific dynamics of each molecule. Moreover, we apply this insight to investigate a functional light harvesting biosystem, and lay the basis for a technique that has the time and space resolution required to observe these systems in vivo. In chapter 1, we introduce the concepts and techniques the research in this thesis is built on. In chapter 2, we treat the possibility of controlling ultrafast pulses at the high-NA diffraction limit, and come to conclusions about the procedure to follow there that hold for all pulse-shaping experiments. We show in proof of principle experiments that we can control the ultrafast characteristics of optical pulses in nanometric excitation volumes. In chapters 3 and 4 we report the creation, detection and control of ultrafast quantum dynamics in single organic molecules at room temperature. We show that manipulation of superposition states is possible in these systems within a coherence dephasing time of ~50 fs. This leads to the first observation of rabi-oscillations in room temperature single molecules, to ultrafast operation of an organic qubit, and to the creation of non-stationary superposition states (vibrational wavepackets). We probe the influence of the local environment on the composition and dynamics of these wavepackets and show we can optimize the state preparation protocol for each individual molecule in its own nanoenvironment, leading to high fidelity coherent control. In these chapters we lay out the proof of principle work of detecting the quantumdynamics of a complex system in interaction with its environment at room temperature. In chapter 5 we discuss application of these techniques to the investigation of long lived coherence in photosynthetic systems. We show that electronic coherence between different rings of the LH2 system persists to time scales of 100s of femtoseconds at room temperature. Moreover we show that the energy transfer pathways in LH2 adapt to environmentally induced changes in the molecule and that the nature of the transfer remains coherent for each pathway, providing strong evidence that coherent energy transfer is the optimum process for energy transfer in photosynthesis. Finally, in chapter 6 we take the technical development one step further and report on the creation of a framework based on plasmonic antennas that allows for control of the amplitude-phase characteristics in nanometric sized hotspot fields. We show for the first time that the ultrafast characteristics of plasmonic hotspots can directly be engineered through design of the plasmonic system and experimentally demonstrate two much-anticipated examples: a sub-diffraction resolution phase shaper and an ultrafast plasmonic switch for pump probe experiments. The results presented in this thesis form the first creation and observation of ultrafast coherent dynamics in individual molecular systems at room temperature. This is a necessary step to be able to do true quantum tomography in complex systems, resolve the influence of the environment on molecular dynamics, and investigate the physics that determines evolutionary optimization and functionality in biomolecules.
We have theoretically investigated the vibrational population transfer in the presence of manifolds of rotational levels in a model 15-level Li2 molecular system by stimulated Raman adiabatic passage with intense unchirped femtosecond laser pulses. We have considered five rotational levels Jg=0,2,…,8 associated with the initial vibrational level vg=0 of the ground electronic state $X\text{ }{^{1}\ensuremath{\Sigma}}_{g}^{+}$, five rotational levels Ji=1,3,…,9 associated with the vibrational level vi=1 of the intermediate excited electronic state $A\text{ }{^{1}\ensuremath{\Sigma}}_{u}^{+}$, and five rotational levels Jf=0,2,…,8 associated with the final target vibrational levels vf=1,2 of the $X\text{ }{^{1}\ensuremath{\Sigma}}_{g}^{+}$ state of the Li2 alkali dimer. The pump and Stokes laser pulses are taken to have the same temporal (Gaussian) shapes, pulse widths, and linear parallel polarizations. The laser wavelengths are in the (visible) range of 700--740 nm. The (peak) intensities of the pulses are of the order of $1\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{12}--2.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{13}\text{ }\text{W}/{\text{cm}}^{2}$ and the pulse widths are of the order of 20--50 fs. We have solved the 15 coupled time-dependent Schr\"odinger equations to study the population transfer to the target-excited vibrational levels. We have observed that, even with ``mushrooming'' of closely spaced rotational levels, efficient and selective population transfer to excited vibrational levels in Li2 alkali dimer can be achieved for counterintuitive pulse sequence by controlling the pump and Stokes laser parameters. We have endeavored to explain the results within the framework of adiabatic picture.
We present an analysis of two experimental approaches to controlling the directionality of molecular rotation with ultrashort laser pulses. The two methods are based on the molecular interaction with either a pair of pulses (a ``double-kick'' scheme) or a longer pulse sequence (a ``chiral-pulse-train'' scheme). In both cases, rotational control is achieved by varying the polarization of and the time delay between the consecutive laser pulses. Using the technique of polarization-sensitive resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization, we show that both methods produce significant rotational directionality. We demonstrate that increasing the number of excitation pulses supplements the ability to control the sense of molecular rotation with quantum-state selectivity, i.e., predominant excitation of a single rotational state. We also demonstrate the ability of both techniques to generate counterrotation of molecular nuclear-spin isomers (here, ortho- and para-nitrogen) and molecular isotopologs (here, 14N2 and 15N2).
Efficient excitation of an ensemble of atoms and molecules to a desired state is of fundamental importance not only for spectroscopy but also for quantum control of molecular dynamics in chemical and biological processes. The latter usually occurs on a much shorter time scale (in the femtosecond range) giving rise to steadily advanced problem how to excite one of the nearby levels, even when they are well within the broad fs pulse spectrum. We propose a new effective method for selective excitation of atoms based on the atomic coherence and discuss a sensitive method to verify experimentally the proposed mechanism using the technique of quantum beating in pump-probe experiments.