Abstract

Recently, it has been suggested that population transfer by adiabatic rapid passage in a multi-level system can be increased by staggering the arrival of the laser pulses¹. While it is generally assumed that nonlinear generation with four-wave mixing is optimized when the input pulses are perfectly synchronized, the following question may be raised: Will enhancement of nonlinear generation occur by the staggering of pulses, even when the population is trapped in the lowest state, as in nonlinear optical processes with electromagnetically-induced transparency²? This paper presents experimental results demonstrating this effect in nonlinear generation of Lyman-β radiation (102.6 nm) with reduced absorption, in coherently pumped atomic hydrogen.

© 1994 Optical Society of America