Chirp control

Saito, T. Kobayashi, T. Conformational Change in Azobenzene in Photoisomerization Process Studied with Chirp-Controlled sub-lO-fs Pulses.]. Phys. Chem. A 2002, 106, 9436-9441. 

Since the development of titanium-sapphire (Ti Sa) femtosecond laser source, the domain of research fields or development covered by the use of ultrafast lasers is in continuous expansion. In femtochemistry, it was realized that, when in a photochemical reaction different pathways lead to a given final state, the presence of a well-controlled frequency pulse chirp might greatly enhance the probability with which this final state is reached [1,2]. Chirp control is needed and mastering the phase of the laser pulse is the key point. 

Chirp Control of High Harmonic Generation Performed with Self-Guided Laser Pulses... 

The fact that such an experimental window for coherent control in liquids does actually exist was verified in experiments on the selective multiphoton excitation of two distinct electronically and structurally complex dye molecules in solution (Brixner et al. 2001(b)). In these experiments, despite the failure of single-parameter variation (wavelength, intensity or linear chirp control), adaptive femtosecond pulse shaping revealed that complex laser fields could achieve chemically selective molecular excitation. These results prove, first, that the phase coherence of complex molecules persists for more than 100 fs in a solvent environment. Second, this is direct proof that it is the nontrivial coherent manipulation of the excited state and not of the frequency-dependent two-photon cross sections that is responsible for the coherent control of the population of the excited molecular state. 

The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that the techniques of quantum control, which were developed originally to study atoms and molecules, can be applied to the solid state. Previous work considered a simple example, the asymmetric double quantum well (ADQW). Results for this system showed that both the wave paeket dynamics and the THz emission can be controlled with simple, experimentally feasible laser pulses. This work extends the previous results to superlattices and chirped superlattices. These systems are considerably more complicated, because their dynamic phase space is much larger. They also have potential applications as solid-state devices, such as ultrafast switches or detectors. 

The above set of conditions are complete in the sense that a transition from any initial state to any final state can be controlled perfectly. This idea can also be applied to multilevel problems. In the practical applications, the quadratic chirping, that is, one-period oscillation, is quite useful, as demonstrated by numerical applications given below. 

The second example is the quadratically chirped pump-dump scheme. Since the pioneering work by Tannor and Rice [119], the pump-dump method has been widely used to control various processes. However, since it is not possible to transfer a wave packet from one potential energy surface to another nearly completely by using the ordinary transform limited or linear chirped pulses, the... 

Figure 39. Pump-dump control of NaK molecule by using two quadratically chirped pulses. The initial state taken as the ground vibrational eigenstate of the ground state X is excited by a quadratically chirped pulse to the excited state A. This excited wavepacket is dumped at the outer turning point at t 230 fs by the second quadratically chirped pulse. The laser parameters used are = 2.75(1.972) X 10-2 eVfs- 1.441(1.031) eV, and / = 0.15(0.10)TWcm-2 for the first (second) pulse. The two pulses are centered at t = 14.5 fs and t2 = 235.8 fs, respectively. Both of them have a temporal width i = 20 fs. (See color insert.) Taken from Ref. [37].

Figure 40. Pump-dump control of NaK by using two quadraticaUy chirped pulses. The initial state and the first step of pump are the same as in Fig. 39. The excited wave packet is now dumped at R 6.5cio on the way to the outer turning point. The parameters of the second pulse are a ) = 1.929 X 10 eVfs , = 1.224eV, and I = 0.lOTWcm . The second pulse is centered at...

You slowly sit up in bed, push aside your blankets, and turn on The Today Show with your TV s remote control. You listen with half an ear as Katie Couric interviews Madonna. Outside, a few birds chirp in the cloudy morning air. 

Coherent excitation of quantum systems by external fields is a versatile and powerful tool for application in quantum control. In particular, adiabatic evolution has been widely used to produce population transfer between discrete quantum states. Eor two states the control is by means of a varying detuning (a chirp), while for three states the change is induced, for example, by a pair of pulses, offset in time, that implement stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) [1-3]. STIRAP produces complete population transfer between the two end states 11) and 3) of a chain linked by two fields. In the adiabatic limit, the process places no temporary population in the middle state 2), even though the two driving fields - pump and Stokes-may be on exact resonance with their respective transitions, 1) 2)and... 

A negative chirped pulse is shown in Figure 6.4c. Experiments and theoretical studies on coherent control of ultrafast electron dynamics by intense chirped laser pulses will be discussed in Sections 6.3.2.3 and 633.2. 

In the following, we will discuss two basic - and in a sense complementary [44] - physical mechanisms to exert efficient control on the strong-field-induced coherent electron dynamics. In the first scenario, SPODS is implemented by a sequence of ultrashort laser pulses (discrete temporal phase jumps), whereas the second scenario utilizes a single chirped pulse (continuous phase variations) to exert control on the dressed state populations. Both mechanisms have distinct properties with respect to multistate excitations such as those discussed in Section 6.3.3. 

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