Short-pulse chirped adiabatic population transfer in diatomic molecules

Abstract

Using the concept of light-induced potentials introduced by Garraway and Suominen @Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 932 ~1998!#, we study alternative schemes of adiabatic population transfer in a diatomic molecule from the lowest vibrational level of the ground electronic state to the lowest vibrational level of a third electronic state via allowed optical transitions from the ground and third electronic states to a second electronic state. Our chirped-pulse rapid adiabatic passage scheme is implemented with short-duration optical pulses, and can be understood in terms of ‘‘road design engineering’’ of the light-induced time-dependent adiabatic potential upon which the dynamics occurs. We explicitly show that complete adiabatic vibronic population transfer occurs using chirped picosecond-duration pulses in the sodium dimer example.