Sequences of phase-locked laser pulses have been employed to control the orbital angular momentum character of an electron wave packet, which is initially created from a superposition of $s$ and $d$ Rydberg series. By an intelligent choice of phase, which depends on the excitation energy and the quantum defects, we are able to selectively pump down either all or a fraction of one or other angular momentum component, and by employing multichannel quantum-defect theory we are able to analyze the quantum-state distribution in detail.

• Received 13 August 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.263004