Coherent control of a multilevel resonant medium by subcycle pulses

Abstract

We theoretically demonstrate the possibility of coherent control of the response of a multilevel resonant medium by means of half-cycle unipolar or quasi-unipolar attosecond pulses. We show that despite the ultrabroad spectrum of half-cycle pulses the induced medium polarization can be efficiently steered through the proper choice of the parameters for the excitation pulses. Besides, we found that the response of a multilevel medium for the amplitude of driving subcycle pulses below a certain threshold can be quantitatively well approximated by the two-level model.