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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Enhancing Autler-Townes splittings by ultrafast XUV pulses

Wei-Chao Jiang1,*, Hao Liang2, Shun Wang1, Liang-You Peng2,3,4,†, and Joachim Burgdörfer5

  • 1College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
  • 2State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics and Frontiers Science Center for Nano-optoelectronics, School of Physics, Peking University, 100871 Beijing, China
  • 3Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100871, China
  • 4Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China
  • 5Institute for Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, A-1040 Vienna, Austria, EU

  • *jiang.wei.chao@szu.edu.cn
  • †liangyou.peng@pku.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Research 3, L032052 – Published 25 August, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.L032052

Abstract

We study the photoelectron spectra of hydrogen and helium ionized by intense ultrafast two-color XUV laser pulses by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. The photon energy of the pump pulse is tuned to the 1s−2p excitation energy, inducing Rabi oscillations between these bound states and forming an Autler-Townes (AT) doublet of dressed states. When ionized by a time-delayed ultrafast XUV pulse with duration shorter than the Rabi oscillation period, we find novel and drastically enhanced AT splittings in the photoionization spectrum. We identify their origin in terms of the temporal interference of two attosecond wave packets whose spectral distribution is controlled by the interplay between Rabi frequency and bandwidth of the probe pulse. These time-dependent features in the spectra can be much larger than the standard AT spacing induced by the pump pulse alone and can be controlled by the time delay and the duration of the probe pulse.

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Phys. Rev. Research 3, L032052– Published 25 August, 2021
  • Received 15 May 2021
  • Accepted 16 July 2021
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