Manipulation and visualization of two-dimensional phase distribution of vibrational wave functions in solid parahydrogen crystal

Abstract

Solid parahydrogen, which is known to have an exceptionally long vibrational coherence lifetime as a molecular solid, offers an ideal testbed to perform coherent control experiments in the condensed phase. Here we demonstrate the spatial manipulation and visualization of the relative phase of vibrational wave functions in solid parahydrogen. Spatial distribution of vibrational excitation is generated by femtosecond impulsive Raman excitation. It is shown that the imprinted initial phase can be manipulated by wave-front modulation of the excitation laser pulses with a spatial light modulator. An interferometric measurement is used to convert the spatial phase distribution of the vibrational wave functions to the amplitude distribution. We have confirmed that the spatial profile of the scattered anti-Stokes pulse reveals the spatial phase distribution of the wave functions. The read-and-write scheme demonstrated in this experiment is applicable to a broad range of Raman memory systems accessible by $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-type transitions.