Dresden 2011 – scientific programme
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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik
MO 17: Quantum Control
MO 17.3: Talk
Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 17:00–17:15, TOE 317
The von Neumann representation as a parameterization for polarization-shaped laser pulses — •Stefan Ruetzel1, Anja Krischke1, Tobias Brixner1, and David J. Tannor2 — 1Institut für Physikalische und Theoretische Chemie, Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg — 2Department of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76190 Rehovot, Israel
Polarization-shaped laser pulses offer a wide range of applications in femtosecond spectroscopy and coherent control. The description of such laser pulses is generally provided in time or frequency domain. Time–frequency descriptions descriptions were shown to be useful in the past but have been limited to linearly polarized fields. Here we introduce the von Neumann description as a parameterization for polarization-shaped laser pulses. The electric field is expanded in terms of Gaussian-shaped transform-limited subpulses located on a discrete time–frequency lattice, each with a specific polarization state. On the one hand this formalism can serve as a new description of polarization-shaped laser pulses, simplifying the interpretation of the time- and frequency-dependent polarization state of the light field. On the other hand the polarization state of the laser pulse can directly be defined in the joint time–frequency domain, which allows for an intuitive parameterization of such laser pulses with a reduced number of variables compared to common laser pulse descriptions. Possible applications for future experiments will be presented.