Coherent Control of Ultracold Collisions with Chirped Light: Direction Matters
Abstract
We demonstrate the ability to coherently control ultracold atomic Rb collisions using frequency-chirped light on the nanosecond time scale. For certain center frequencies of the chirp, the rate of inelastic trap-loss collisions induced by negatively chirped light is dramatically suppressed compared to the case of a positive chirp. We attribute this to a fundamental asymmetry in the system: an excited wavepacket always moves inward on the attractive molecular potential. For a positive chirp, the resonance condition moves outward in time, while for a negative chirp, it moves inward, in the same direction as the excited wavepacket; this allows multiple interactions between the wavepacket and the light, enabling the wavepacket to be returned coherently to the ground state. Classical and quantum calculations support this interpretation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0612071,
title = {Coherent Control of Ultracold Collisions with Chirped Light: Direction Matters},
author = {M. J. Wright and J. A. Pechkis and J. L. Carini and S. Kallush and R. Kosloff and P. L. Gould},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0612071},
year = {2009}
}