The effects of intense electromagnetic fields on the decay of quasistationary states are investigated theoretically. We focus on the parameter regime of strong laser fields and nonlinear effects where an essentially nonperturbative description is required. Our approach is based on the imaginary time method previously introduced in the theory of strong-field ionization. Spectra and total decay rates are presented for a test case and the results are compared with exact numerical calculations. The potential of this method is confirmed by good quantitative agreement with the numerical results.
A time-resolved spectroscopic protocol exploiting terahertz-assisted photoionization is proposed to reconstruct transient density matrix. Population and coherence elements are effectively mapped onto spectrally separated peaks in photoionization spectra. The beatings of coherence dynamics can be temporally resolved beyond the pulse duration, and the relative phase between involved states is directly readable from the oscillatory spectral distribution. As demonstrated by a photo-excited multilevel open quantum system, the method shows potential applications for sub-femtosecond time-resolved mea…
Rescattering effects in nonresonant spontaneous laser-assisted electron-atom bremsstrahlung (LABrS) are analyzed within the framework of time-dependent effective-range (TDER) theory. It is shown that high energy LABrS spectra exhibit rescattering plateau structures that are similar to those that are well-known in strong field laser-induced processes as well as those that have been predicted theoretically in laser-assisted collision processes. In the limit of a low-frequency laser field, an analytic description of LABrS is obtained from a rigorous quantum analysis of the exact TDER results for …
We discuss the coupling of the motion of two ion species in separate Penning traps via a common tank circuit. The enhancement of the coupling assisted by the tank circuit is demonstrated by an avoided crossing behavior measurement of the motional modes of two coupled ions. We propose an intermittent laser cooling method for sympathetic cooling and provide a theoretical description. The technique enables tuning of the coupling strength between two ion species in separate traps and thus allows for efficient sympathetic cooling of an arbitrary type of single ion for high-precision Penning-trap ex…
We propose a new type of Feshbach resonance occurring when two different ultracold atoms in their ground state undergo an s-wave collision in the presence of a continuous-wave laser light. The atoms collide in the dissociation continuum of the molecular electronic ground state which is coupled by the light to a rovibrational level of the same electronic ground state: we name this a Laser-Assisted Self-Induced Feshbach Resonance (LASIFR). This mechanism, valid for all polar molecules, is analyzed on the example of ultracold 87Rb and 84Sr atoms, for which the laser frequency falls in the THz ran…
Cooling of molecules via free-space dissipative scattering of photons is thought not to be practicable due to the inherently large number of Raman loss channels available to molecules and the prohibitive expense of building multiple repumping laser systems. The use of an optical cavity to enhance coherent Rayleigh scattering into a decaying cavity mode has been suggested as a potential method to mitigate Raman loss, thereby enabling the laser cooling of molecules to ultracold temperatures. We discuss the possibility of cavity-assisted laser cooling particles without closed transitions, identif…
Laser cooling is theoretically investigated in a cascade three-level scheme, where the excited state of a laser-driven transition is coupled by a second laser to a top, more stable level, as for alkali-earth atoms. The second laser action modifies the atomic scattering cross section and produces temperatures lower than those reached by Doppler cooling on the lower transition. When multiphoton processes due to the second laser are relevant, an electromagnetic induced transparency modifies the absorption of the first laser, and the final temperature is controlled by the second laser parameters. …
We analyze two configurations for laser cooling of neutral atoms whose internal states store qubits. The atoms are trapped in an optical lattice which is placed inside a cavity. We show that the coupling of the atoms to the damped cavity mode can provide a mechanism which leads to cooling of the motion without destroying the quantum information.
We study the temporal aspects of laser-assisted extreme ultraviolet (XUV) photoionization using attosecond pulses of harmonic radiation. The aim of this paper is to establish the general form of the phase of the relevant transition amplitudes and to make the connection with the time-delays that have been recently measured in experiments. We find that the overall phase contains two distinct types of contributions: one is expressed in terms of the phase-shifts of the photoelectron continuum wavefunction while the other is linked to continuum--continuum transitions induced by the infrared (IR) la…
The translational motion of molecular ions can be effectively cooled sympathetically to temperatures below 100 mK in ion traps through Coulomb interactions with laser-cooled atomic ions. The distribution of internal rovibrational states, however, gets in thermal equilibrium with the typically much higher temperature of the environment within tens of seconds. We consider a concept for rotational cooling of such internally hot, but translationally cold heteronuclear diatomic molecular ions. The scheme relies on a combination of optical pumping from a few specific rotational levels into a ``dark …
It is now common practice to solve the Schrödinger equation to estimate the tunneling current between two metal electrodes at specified potentials, or the transmission through a potential barrier by assuming an incident, reflected, and transmitted wave. However, we suggest that these methods may not be appropriate for nanoscale circuits. The electron man-free path may be as long as 68.2 nm in metallic elements so we consider the possibility that quantum effects may occur throughout a nanoscale circuit, including the connections. Analytical methods are presented for modeling the coherent transf…
We present experimental evidence supporting the postulation that the secondary effects of light-assisted collisions are the main reason that the superradiant light scattering efficiency in condensates is asymmetric with respect to the sign of the pump-laser detuning. Contrary to the recent experimental study, however, we observe severe and comparable heating with all three pump-laser polarizations. We also perform two-color, double-pulse measurements to directly study the degradation of condensate coherence and the resulting impact on the superradiant scattering efficiency.
Electron-positron pair production by the Breit-Wheeler process embedded in a strong laser pulse is analyzed. The transverse momentum spectrum displays prominent peaks which are interpreted as caustics, the positions of which are accessible by the stationary phases. Examples are given for the superposition of an XFEL beam with an optical high-intensity laser beam. Such a configuration is available, e.g., at LCLS at present and at European XFEL in near future. It requires a counter propagating probe photon beam with high energy which can be generated by synchronized inverse Compton backscatterin…
We observe Wannier-Stark localization in curved photonic lattices, realized using arrays of evanescently coupled optical waveguides. By correctly tuning the strength of inter-site coupling in the lattice, we observe that Wannier-Stark states become increasingly localized, and eventually fully localized to one site, as the curvature of the lattice is increased. We then demonstrate that tunneling can be successfully restored in the lattice by applying a sinusoidal modulation to the lattice position, an effect that is a direct analogue of photon-assisted tunneling. This precise tuning of the tunn…
We study the exact dynamics underlying stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) for a particle in a multi-level anharmonic system (the infinite square-well) driven by two sequential laser pulses, each with constant carrier frequency. In phase space regions where the laser pulses create chaos, the particle can be transferred coherently into energy states different from those predicted by traditional STIRAP. It appears that a transition to chaos can provide a new tool to control the outcome of STIRAP.
In this paper, we have investigated the charged kaons decay at the lowest order in the presence of a circularly polarized laser field. To be more precise, we have examined the leptonic decay of both positive (matter) and negative (antimatter) kaon which weakly decay via the exchange of $W$ boson. Indeed, we have derived the expression of the leptonic decay width, the leptonic branching ratio, the leptonic ratio and the charged kaon lifetime by using the decay matrix approach. In addition, by using numerical computation, we have presented and discussed how the laser field influences these physi…
Rydberg atoms with dipole-dipole interactions provide intriguing platforms to explore exotic quantum many-body physics. Here we propose a novel scheme with laser-assisted dipole-dipole interactions to realize synthetic magnetic field for Rydberg atoms in a two-dimensional array configuration, which gives rise to the exotic bosonic topological states. In the presence of an external effective Zeeman splitting gradient, the dipole-dipole interaction between neighboring Rydberg atoms along the gradient direction is suppressed, but can be assisted when Raman lights are applied to compensate the ene…
Coherent control of chaotic molecular systems, using laser-assisted alignment of sulphur dioxide (SO$_2$) molecules in the presence of a static electric field as an example, is considered. Conditions for which the classical version of this system is chaotic are established, and the quantum and classical analogs are shown to be in very good correspondence. It is found that the chaos present in the classical system does not impede the alignment, neither in the classical nor the quantum system. Using the results of numerical calculations, we suggest that laser-assisted alignment is stable against…
