Intense Field Population Transfer

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This work examines two aspects of the interaction of light and matter under conditions of strong response: 1) supercontinuum generation (SCG), the dramatic transfer of pump photons to modes covering a broad spectrum and 2) adiabatic passage (AP) in atoms, the transfer of atomic population from one state to another via pulses in "counter-intuitive" sequence. SCG is fundamentally important to the study of intense pulse propagation through media and has found important application in the generation of tunable short laser pulses, high-speed communication systems, frequency metrology, and medical diagnostics. AP is a robust and efficient technique for population transfer which has found useful application in atom optics and quantum measurement. Experiments will be undertaken to examine the details of SCG in order to establish understanding at a fundamental level. AP will be explored through the use of shaped laser pulses and via various intermediate states.