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ACS symposium series

Control of Chemical Reactions by Using Chirped Laser Pulses

Junici Shimamura, Kenji Mishima, Koichi Yamashita

Published Jun 21, 2002• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum wavepacket calculations have been performed to study ways of using chirped laser pulses to control (a) complete population transfer, (b) coherent Raman processes, and (c) vibrational cooling via photoassociation. It has been found that positively and negatively chirped pulses significantly influence the behavior of wavepackets for these elementary processes. Although some of the numerical results can be interpreted from the standpoint of intra-pulse pump-dump processes, we have discovered some novel characteristics of chirped pulses.

DOI
10.1021/bk-2002-0821.ch006

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Quantum wavepacket calculations have been performed to study ways of using chirped laser pulses to control (a) complete population transfer, (b) coherent Raman processes, and (c) vibrational cooling via photoassociation. It has been found that positively and negatively chirped pulses significantly influence the behavior of wavepackets for these elementary processes. Although some of the numerical results can be interpreted from the standpoint of intra-pulse pump-dump processes, we have discovered some novel characteristics of chirped pulses.
This theoretical paper presents numerical calculations for the photoassociation of ultracold cesium atoms with a chirped laser pulse and a detailed analysis of the results. In contrast with earlier work, the initial state is represented by a stationary continuum wave function. In the chosen example, it is shown that an important population transfer is achieved to $\ensuremath{\approx}15$ vibrational levels in the vicinity of the v=98v=98v=98 bound level in the external well of the ${0}_{g}^{\ensuremath{-}}(6s+6{p}_{3∕2})$ potential. Such levels lie in the energy range swept by the instantaneous frequency of the pulse, thus defining a ``photoassociation window.'' Levels outside this window may be significantly excited during the pulse, but no population remains there after the pulse. Finally, the population transfer to the last vibrational levels of the ground $a\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}^{3}\ensuremath{\sum}_{u}^{+}(6\mathrm{s}+6\mathrm{s})$ state is significant, making stable molecules. The results are interpreted in the framework of a two-state model as an adiabatic inversion mechanism, efficient only within the photoassociation window. The large value found for the photoassociation rate suggests promising applications. The present chirp has been designed in view of creating in the excited state a vibrational wave packet that is focusing at the barrier of the double-well potential.
Abstract The first step in the coherent control of a photoinduced binary reaction is bond making or photoassociation. We have recently demonstrated coherent control of bond making in multi-photon femtosecond photoassociation of hot magnesium atoms, using linearly chirped pulses (Levin et al 2015 Phys. Rev. Lett. 114 233003 ). The detected yield of photoassociated magnesium dimers was enhanced by positively chirped pulses which is explained theoretically by a combination of purification and chirp-dependent Raman transitions. The yield could be further enhanced by pulse optimization resulting in pulses with an effective linear chirp and a sub-pulse structure, where the latter allows for exploiting vibrational coherences. Here, we systematically explore the efficiency of phase-shaped pulses for the coherent control of bond making, employing a parametrization of the spectral phases in the form of cosine functions. We find up to an order of magnitude enhancement of the yield compared to the unshaped transform-limited pulse. The highly performing pulses all display an overall temporally increasing instantaneous frequency and are composed of several overlapping sub-pulses. The time delay between the first two sub-pulses fits very well the vibrational frequency of the generated intermediate wavepacket. These findings are in agreement with chirp-dependent Raman transitions and exploitation of vibrational dynamics as underlying control mechanisms.
We demonstrate coherent control of bond making, a milestone on the way to coherent control of photoinduced bimolecular chemical reactions. In strong-field multiphoton femtosecond photoassociation experiments, we find the yield of detected magnesium dimer molecules to be enhanced for positively chirped pulses and suppressed for negatively chirped pulses. Our ab initio model shows that control is achieved by purification combined with chirp-dependent Raman transitions. Experimental closed-loop phase optimization using a learning algorithm yields an improved pulse that utilizes vibrational coherent dynamics in addition to chirp-dependent Raman transitions. Our results show that coherent control of binary photoreactions is feasible even under thermal conditions.
The laser-induced vibrational state-selectivity of product HF in photoassociation reaction H+F→HF is theoretically investigated by using the time-dependent quantum wave packet method. The population transfer process from the continuum state down to the bound vibrational states can be controlled by the driving laser. The effects of laser pulse parameters and the initial momentum of the two collision atoms on the vibrational population of the product HF are discussed in detail. Photodissociation accompanied with the photoassociation process is also described.
We investigate the use of chirped laser pulses to control the tunneling dynamics in the 0g−(6s,6p3/2) double well of Cs2 coupled with other electronic surfaces. The possibility to manipulate the tunneling dynamics appears in a pump-dump scheme designed to form deeply bound cold molecules by photoassociation of two cold cesium atoms in the 0g−(6s,6p3/2) electronic state coupled with a3Σu+ (6s,6s) electronic state. The dump pulse is acting on the 0g−(6s,6p3/2) barrier and can be used to control the tunneling and to capture population in the inner well in deep vibrational levels out of tunneling resonances.