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Femtosecond two-photon Rabi oscillations in excited He driven by ultrashort intense laser fields

Nature Photonics volume 10, pages 102–105 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Coherent light–matter interaction provides powerful methods for manipulating quantum systems1,2,3. Rabi oscillation is one such process. As it enables complete population transfer to a target state, it is thus routinely exploited in a variety of applications in photonics, notably quantum information processing4,5. The extension of coherent control techniques to the multiphoton regime offers wider applicability, and access to highly excited or dipole-forbidden transition states. However, the multiphoton Rabi process is often disrupted by other competing nonlinear effects such as the a.c. Stark shift, especially at the high laser-field intensities necessary to achieve ultrafast Rabi oscillations6. Here we demonstrate a new route to drive two-photon Rabi oscillations on timescales as short as tens of femtoseconds, by utilizing the strong-field phenomenon known as Freeman resonance7. The scenario is not specific to atomic helium as investigated in the present study, but broadly applicable to other systems, thus opening new prospects for the ultrafast manipulation of Rydberg states8.

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Figure 1: Experimental scheme.
Figure 2: Photoelectron spectra of He in the 1s2p excited state (M = ±1) in intense NIR laser fields.
Figure 3: NIR laser field intensity dependence of photoelectron yields and populations of the excited states.
Figure 4: Effect of relative polarization angle between EUV and NIR laser pulses.
Figure 5: Effect of the intermediate state detuning on the two-photon Rabi oscillations.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge valuable comments by N. Takei and J.R. Harries, and support from the SCSS Test Accelerator Operation Group at RIKEN. This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 24540425, 24350006, 26400415, 10500598.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa, Nagoya, 464-8602, Aichi, Japan

    M. Fushitani, A. Matsuda, T. Endo, Y. Toida & A. Hishikawa

  2. RIKEN, SPring-8 Center, Sayo, 679-5148, Hyogo, Japan

    M. Fushitani, M. Nagasono, M. Yabashi, T. Ishikawa, Y. Hikosaka & A. Hishikawa

  3. Department of Physics, Fu-Jen Catholic University, Taipei, 24205, Taiwan

    C.-N. Liu

  4. Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute, Sayo, 679-5198, Hyogo, Japan

    T. Togashi & M. Yabashi

  5. Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama, Toyama, 930-0194, Japan

    Y. Hikosaka

  6. Department of Engineering Science and Institute for Advanced Science, The University of Electro-Communications, 1-5-1 Chofu-ga-oka, Chofu, 182-8585, Tokyo, Japan

    T. Morishita

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Contributions

M.F., Y.H., A.M., C.N.L., T.M. and A.H. designed the experiment. M.F., A.M., T.E., Y.T., Y.H., and A.H. conducted the measurements and collected the data. M.N., T.T., M.Y. and T.I. supported the experiment. C.N.L. and T.M. performed the theoretical calculations. M.F., C.N.L., T.M. and A.H. analysed the experimental and theoretical data. M.F., T.M., C.N.L., A.M., Y.H., and A.H. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to A. Hishikawa.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Fushitani, M., Liu, CN., Matsuda, A. et al. Femtosecond two-photon Rabi oscillations in excited He driven by ultrashort intense laser fields. Nature Photon 10, 102–105 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.228

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