Abstract
A non-dispersing wave packet has been attracting much interest from various scientific and technological viewpoints. However, most quantum systems are accompanied by anharmonicity, so that retardation of quantum wave-packet dispersion is limited to very few examples only under specific conditions and targets. Here we demonstrate a conceptually new and universal method to retard or advance the dispersion of a quantum wave packet through 'programmable time shift' induced by a strong non-resonant femtosecond laser pulse. A numerical simulation has verified that a train of such retardation pulses stops wave-packet dispersion.
Highlights
The classical soliton [1], which is a localized wave propagating without spreading, is a general phenomenon that can be observed in various physical systems including water waves [2], optical pulses in a fiber [3], and an electric LC circuit [4]
The decay of the beat amplitude is due to spreading of the wave packet induced by its dispersion, which arises from the anharmonicity of the electronic potential curve
To remove the effect of the NIR pulse on the wave packet generated in the E state by the probe pulse, the NIR pulse is blocked when the probe pulse is shined before the NIR pulse
Summary
The classical soliton [1], which is a localized wave propagating without spreading, is a general phenomenon that can be observed in various physical systems including water waves [2], optical pulses in a fiber [3], and an electric LC circuit [4]. In very few examples only under specific conditions and targets, people could reduce the influence of such anharmonicity by the external perturbation and observe soliton-like motions [18] Those examples include a Bose-Einstein condensate [8,9,10,11,12], Rydberg wave packet in an alkaline atom [19], and microcavity polariton [13,14,15]. Maeda et al have performed an interesting experiment, in which the Rydberg electron wave packet is irradiated with a microwave continuously, so that the motion of the wave packet is synchronized with the microwave oscillation, and its dispersion is controlled [19] This scheme could be useful for charged particles such as electrons, a more universal scheme is necessary to be applied to. Our method can control the shape of a wave packet at any timing during its propagation, and a sequence of such controls can stop its dispersion, clearly distinguishing itself from previous studies where the free evolution of a wave packet was changed naturally by changing its initial phases [24,25,26]
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