Cancellation of the coherent accumulation in rubidium atoms excited by a train of femtosecond pulses

Journal Article · Mon Oct 15 04:00:00 EDT 2007 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.76.043410· OSTI ID:21020753

Ban, T; Aumiler, D; Skenderovic, H; Vdovic, S; Vujicic, N; Pichler, G ^[1]

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1. Institute of Physics, Bijenicka 46, Zagreb (Croatia)

We investigated the coherence accumulation in Rb atoms excited by a train of femtosecond pulses. The coherence accumulation results in the velocity selective optical pumping of Rb hyperfine levels, observed by a cw probe laser. The effects of the pulse train excitation on the cw probe laser transmission were investigated, depending on the probe laser power. We observed the probe laser absorption increase in the strong probe case, followed by the reduction of the modulations in the probe laser absorption. Results show that accumulation of population and coherence can be effectively reduced and eventually destroyed by increasing the cw laser intensity. A strong cw laser can therefore serve as a switch from the pulse-train to pulse-by-pulse type of interaction of Rb atoms with the fs laser. We developed a density-matrix based theoretical model of the eight-level Rb atoms interacting with the fs and cw laser fields, and present agreement with the experimental results.

• OSTI ID: 21020753
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Journal Name: Physical Review. A Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 76; ISSN 1050-2947; ISSN PLRAAN
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ABSORPTION
ATOMS
CANCELLATION
COHERENT RADIATION
DENSITY MATRIX
EXCITATION
HYPERFINE STRUCTURE
INTERACTIONS
LASER RADIATION
MODULATION
OPTICAL PUMPING
PHOTON-ATOM COLLISIONS
PROBES
PULSES
REDUCTION
RUBIDIUM
TRANSMISSION
VELOCITY