Control of Population Flow in Coherently Driven Quantum Ladders

Abstract

A technique for adiabatic control of the population flow through a preselected decaying excited level in a three-level quantum ladder is presented. The population flow through the intermediate or upper level is controlled efficiently and robustly by varying the pulse delay between a pair of partly overlapping coherent laser pulses. The technique is analyzed theoretically and demonstrated in an experiment with ${\mathrm{Na}}_2$ molecules.