Programmable cesium Rydberg wave packets

We have used amplified, programmable, shaped optical pulses to engineer Rydberg wave packets in cesium. Our apparatus employs a computer-controlled liquid-crystal pulse shaper which could control either the phase or the magnitude of the pulse’s spectrum. The shaped optical field was analyzed via cross correlation and frequency-resolved optical gating. The wave-packet evolution was analyzed by monitoring temporal interference via the optical Ramsey method to obtain both auto- and cross-interferograms of the engineered wave packet.