Related papers: Transform-limited pulses are not optimal for reson…
Coherent control with shaped ultrafast pulses is a powerful approach for steering nonlinear light-matter interactions. Previous studies in quantum control have shown that, beyond transform-limited pulses, those with antisymmetric spectral…
We demonstrate and study the enhancement of intermediate-field two-photon absorption by shaped femtosecond pulses having spectral phases of antisymmetric nature. The intermediate-field regime corresponds to pulse intensities, where the…
We extend the powerful frequency-domain analysis of femtosecond two-photon absorption to the intermediate-field regime, which involves both two- and four-photon transitions. Consequently, we find a broad family of shaped pulses that enhance…
Scattering of ultraintense short laser pulses off relativistic electrons allows one to generate a large number of X- or $\gamma$-ray photons with the expense of the spectral width---temporal pulsing of the laser inevitable leads to…
We investigate how entanglement can enhance two-photon absorption in a three-level system. First, we employ the Schmidt decomposition to determine the entanglement properties of the optimal two-photon state to drive such a transition, and…
The absorption of a single photon that excites a quantum system from a low to a high energy level is an elementary process of light-matter interaction, and a route towards realizing pure single-photon absorption has both fundamental and…
Few-cycle pulses present an essential tool to track ultrafast dynamics in matter and drive strong field effects. To address photon-hungry applications, high average power lasers are used which, however, cannot directly provide sub-100 fs…
We examine a fundamental problem in quantum optics: What is the optimal pulse form to drive a two-photon-transition? We show that entangled photons in general do so more efficiently than optimal classical pulses, and provide the first…
Applications of terawatt-class lasers can enormously benefit from pulse trains with kHz repetition rates. The associated unprecedented combinations of peak and average powers require the development of new concepts for scalable ultrashort…
By combining genetic algorithm and a spatial light modulator we theoretically analyse how to improve a two-photon cascade absorption in atomic ensembles, inspecting the impact of various configurations and parameters in the optimized phase…
Electromagnetically induced transparency in an optically thick, cold medium creates a unique system where pulse-propagation velocities may be orders of magnitude less than $c$ and optical nonlinearities become exceedingly large. As a…
Intensive light pulse interaction with a dense resonant medium is considered. The possibilities of optical switching and pulse compression at realistic parameters of the medium are analyzed. Pulse shape transformation in different photonic…
We explore the effects of ultrafast shaped pulses for two-level systems that do not have a single photon resonance by developing a multiphoton density-matrix approach. We take advantage of the fact that the dynamics of the intermediate…
The generation of ultra-strong attosecond pulses through laser-plasma interactions offers the opportunity to surpass the intensity of any known laboratory radiation source, giving rise to new experimental possibilities, such as quantum…
There has been an explosion of interest in time-varying photonics due to the recent discovery and design of materials and metamaterials with strong, time-varying, nonlinear optical responses. This opens the door to novel optical phenomena…
We demonstrate numerically a method of focusing two-photon field inside one-dimensional random media. The approach is based on coherent control of backscattering achieved by adaptive spectral pulse shaping. The spectral phases of a…
We describe optimized coherent control methods for two-photon transitions in atoms of a ladder-type three-state energy configuration. Our approach is based on the spatial coherent control scheme which utilizes counter-propagating ultrashort…
At laser wavelengths longer than the prominent 1 {\mu}m range of high-power ytterbium-doped lasers, nonlinear phase shifts produced in nonlinear media for spectral broadening and subsequent pulse compression decrease drastically.…
We experimentally investigate the impact of pulse shape on the dynamics of laser-generated plasma in rare gases. Fast-rising triangular pulses with a slower decay lead to early ionization of the air and depose energy more efficiently than…
We theoretically show that energy absorption in crystalline silicon can be controlled by two-color femtosecond double-pulse irradiation, in which two temporally separated pulses with different wavelengths interact sequentially with the…