Semianalytic treatment of two-color photoassociation spectroscopy and control of cold atoms

Abstract
We present semianalytic expressions for scattering probabilities of cold trapped atoms in the presence of two weak, independently tunable laser fields, both tuned near molecular resonances. We consider two experimental situations. In the first, an Autler-Townes doublet appears and is shown in certain circumstances to exhibit unequal peak heights. In the second, the pair of lasers is employed to produce translationally cold ground-state molecules, in which case our formula suggests the optimal conditions for such production. © 1996 The American Physical Society.