Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / B.D. DePaola / In recent years, coherent excitation techniques have focused on the
ability to efficiently prepare atomic or molecular systems into a
selected state. Such population control plays a key role in
cutting-edge research taking place today, such as in the areas of
quantum information and laser-controlled chemical reactions.
Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) is a widely-used
coherent excitation technique that provides a relatively robust
control mechanism for efficiently exciting a target population into
a desired state. While the technique is well proven, current
experimental techniques yield little information on the population
dynamics taking place throughout the excitation process, and
experimentalists rely solely on final excited-state measurements to
determine the efficiency of population transfer. This dissertation
presents a unique diagnostic tool to measure multilevel coherent
population transfer on a short (nanosecond) timescale. The
technique described here uses magneto-optical trap recoil ion
momentum spectroscopy (MOTRIMS) as a noninvasive probe of a
coherently-controlled system. It provides extremely detailed
information about the excitation process, and highlights some
important characteristics seen in excited populations that would
otherwise be misleading or completely overlooked if one were to use
more traditional diagnostic techniques. This dissertation discusses
both the theoretical and experimental results applied to three-level
coherently excited target populations of Rb-87.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:KSU/oai:krex.k-state.edu:2097/73 |
| Date | January 1900 |
| Creators | Camp, Howard Alan |
| Publisher | Kansas State University |
| Source Sets | K-State Research Exchange |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 16348562 bytes, 28073381 bytes, 21859 bytes, application/pdf, application/octet-stream, application/pdf |
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