TY - JOUR

T1 - Hyperfine interaction in the Autler-Townes effect: Control of two-photon selection rules in the Morris-Shore basis

AU - Cinins, Arturs

AU - Efimov, Dmitry K.

AU - Bruvelis, Martins

AU - Miculis, Kaspars

AU - Kirova, Teodora

AU - Bezuglov, Nikolai N.

AU - Ryabtsev, Igor I.

AU - Auzinsh, Marcis

AU - Ekers, Aigars

N1 - A.C. and K.M. express gratitude to the Latvian Council of Science for funding from Grant No. LZP-2019/1-0280. N.N.B. and I.I.R. acknowledge the support of the Russian Science Foundation, Grant No. 23-12-00067. We thank K. Bergmann for helpful discussions at the early stages of this study.

PY - 2024/6

Y1 - 2024/6

N2 - Earlier research highlighted the absence of certain bright peaks in Autler-Townes laser excitation spectra of alkali-metal atoms and attributed this phenomenon to a specific architecture of adiabatic (or "laser-dressed") states in hyperfine (HF) components. Here we have studied the dressed states' properties in several two-photon excitation schemes where constructive and destructive interferences between HF excitation pathways limit the available two-photon transitions. The analysis reveals a mechanism by which this interference reduces the conventional two-photon selection rule for the total angular momentum F, from ΔF=0,±1 to ΔF0. Our discovery presents a practical method for selectively controlling the populations of unresolvable HF F components of ns1/2 Rydberg states in alkali-metal atoms. Using numerical simulations with sodium and rubidium atoms, we demonstrate that by blocking the effects of HF interaction with a specially tuned auxiliary control-laser field, the deviations from the ideal selectivity of the HF components population can be lower than 0.01% for Na and 0.001% for Rb atoms.

AB - Earlier research highlighted the absence of certain bright peaks in Autler-Townes laser excitation spectra of alkali-metal atoms and attributed this phenomenon to a specific architecture of adiabatic (or "laser-dressed") states in hyperfine (HF) components. Here we have studied the dressed states' properties in several two-photon excitation schemes where constructive and destructive interferences between HF excitation pathways limit the available two-photon transitions. The analysis reveals a mechanism by which this interference reduces the conventional two-photon selection rule for the total angular momentum F, from ΔF=0,±1 to ΔF0. Our discovery presents a practical method for selectively controlling the populations of unresolvable HF F components of ns1/2 Rydberg states in alkali-metal atoms. Using numerical simulations with sodium and rubidium atoms, we demonstrate that by blocking the effects of HF interaction with a specially tuned auxiliary control-laser field, the deviations from the ideal selectivity of the HF components population can be lower than 0.01% for Na and 0.001% for Rb atoms.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85196508086&origin=inward&txGid=d708b24f69873588d857cc8443fae041

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/770cb525-69fb-3f48-b65b-5af1e33e6f91/

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevA.109.063116

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevA.109.063116

M3 - Article

VL - 109

JO - Physical Review A

JF - Physical Review A

SN - 2469-9926

IS - 6

M1 - 063116

ER -