Eliza-Beth W Lerch et al 2008 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 41 074015 doi:10.1088/0953-4075/41/7/074015
Eliza-Beth W Lerch, Xingcan Dai1, Elva A Torres2, Joshua B Ballard3, Hans U Stauffer4 and Stephen R Leone
Show affiliationsLinearly chirped femtosecond laser pulses are used to excite ro-vibrational wave packets in lithium dimers from a single well-prepared launch state. Two-photon resonant Raman transitions excite a manifold of rotational states in a coherent superposition. Excitation with positively chirped laser pulses is shown to enhance a quantum beat involving states with lower rotational quantum numbers, whereas negatively chirped pulses enhance a quantum beat between states with higher rotational quantum numbers, thus steering the rotational coherences to higher or lower rotational states. Time-dependent perturbation theory calculations verify the magnitudes and directions of the enhancement as a function of the applied chirp. The quantitative calculations and experimental results demonstrate that excitation with chirped pulses is an effective method for enhancing specific rotational coherences involving higher or lower rotational states.
33.20.Vq Vibration-rotation analysis
33.15.Mt Rotation, vibration, and vibration-rotation constants
Issue 7 (14 April 2008)
Received 21 September 2007, in final form 7 December 2007
Published 25 March 2008
Eliza-Beth W Lerch et al 2008 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 41 074015
Sebastian Uhlmann JHEP11(2004)003
Liang-You Peng et al 2008 New J. Phys. 10 025030
László B Szabados 2008 Class. Quantum Grav. 25 095005
Jin Seog Kim et al 2006 Metrologia 43 08009
Samuel K. Lee et al JCAP07(2009)007
A Peruzzi et al 2009 Metrologia 46 03001
Nathan Seiberg JHEP03(2005)010
John March-Russell et al JHEP07(2008)058
Stanislav Derevyanko et al 2008 New J. Phys. 10 075019