Coherent Rabi oscillations in a molecular system and sub-diffraction-limited pattern generation Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd. The resolution of a photolithography and optical imaging system is restricted by the diffraction limit. Coherent Rabi oscillations have been shown to be able to overcome the diffraction limit in a simple two-level atomic system (Z Liao, M Al-amri, and M S Zubairy 2010 Phys. Rev. Lett. 105 183601). In this paper, we numerically calculate the wave packet dynamics of a molecular system interacting with an ultrashort laser pulse and show that coherent Rabi oscillations in a molecular system are also possible. Moreover, a sub-diffraction-limited pattern can be generated in this system by introducing spatially modulated Rabi oscillations. We also discuss several techniques to improve the visibility of the sub-diffraction-limited pattern. Our result may have important applications in super-resolution optical lithography and optical imaging.

published proceedings

  • Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics

altmetric score

  • 1

author list (cited authors)

  • Liao, Z., Al-Amri, M., & Zubairy, M. S

citation count

  • 3

complete list of authors

  • Liao, Zeyang||Al-Amri, M||Zubairy, M Suhail

publication date

  • May 2015