The chirped-pulse interaction in the adiabatic coupling regime induces cyclic permutations of the energy states of a three-level system in the $V$-type configuration, which process is known as the three-level chirped rapid adiabatic passage (RAP). Here we show that a spectral hole in a chirped pulse can turn on or off the level mixing at adiabatic crossing points of this process, reducing the system to an effective two-level system. The given hybrid adiabatic-nonadiabatic transition enables selective excitation of the three-level system, controlled by the laser intensity and spectral position of the hole, as well as the sign of the chirp parameter. Experiments performed with shaped femtosecond laser pulses and the three lowest energy levels ($5S_{1/2}$, $5P_{1/2}$, and $5P_{3/2}$) of atomic rubidium $\left(\mathrm{Rb}\right)$ show good agreement with the theoretically analyzed dynamics. The result indicates that our method, when being combined with the ordinary chirped RAP, implements an adiabatic transition between the Raman-coupled excited states. Furthermore, our laser intensity-dependent control may have applications including selective excitations of atoms or ions arranged in space when being used in conjunction with laser beam profile programming.

• Received 14 April 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.94.023412