Enhancing Autler-Townes splittings by ultrafast XUV pulses
Wei‐Chao Jiang, Hao Liang, Shun Wang, Liang-You Peng, Joachim Burgdörfer
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 Schrdinger 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.