Engineering quantum wave-packet dispersion with a strong nonresonant femtosecond laser pulse

Abstract

A nondispersing wave packet has been attracting much interest from various scientific and technological viewpoints. However, most quantum systems are accompanied by anharmonicity, so that retardation of quantum wave-packet dispersion is limited to very few examples only under specific conditions and targets. Here we demonstrate a conceptually universal method to retard or advance the dispersion of a quantum wave packet through “programmable time shift” induced by a strong nonresonant femtosecond laser pulse. A numerical simulation has verified that a train of such retardation pulses stops wave-packet dispersion.