Excitation of atomic coherence at XUV transition enhanced by tunneling in an electric field for X-ray generation

Abstract

We study population transfer in a two-level system interacting with a strong off-resonant electromagnetic field. We show that the effects of tunneling in an electric field enhances the probability of excitation. We discuss the possible applications of results obtained to the generation of XUV radiation.

Keywords:

• quantum coherence
• ultra-short pulses
• ultra-strong fields

Acknowledgments

We thank M. Kash, H. Li, V. Sautenkov, and G. Welch for useful discussions and gratefully acknowledge the support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects, the Office of Naval Research, and the partial support from the CRDF.