Multiphoton population transfer between the rovibrational states of HF

Efficient population transfer by adiabatically chirping through a multiphoton resonance in microwave driven and kicked Rydberg atoms has recently been reported both experimentally and theoretically. Here we report on our simulations in which we have exploited this mechanism to vibrationally excite a diatomic molecule up to |ν = 4, J 〉 from the ground state by chirping through a four-photon resonance condition. This is an efficient means of population transfer, which is an alternative to the ladder climbing scheme requiring chirping through a sequence of states in the correct order. We discuss and compare one-dimensional quantum and classical models where there is no rotational degree of freedom. This comparison suggests that for the lowest laser intensity we consider, the process is classically forbidden and the transition occurs through tunnelling. We show that for larger peak intensities, the transfer can be looked upon as a classical transition in phase space, similar to that observed in the atomic case. We extend our simulations to fully three-dimensional quantum calculations and investigate the effect of coupling between different rotational pathways. We finally discuss the effect of thermal averaging over the initial J-states using a temperature for which the first few rotational levels inside the ν = 0 manifold are populated.