Multiphoton coherent control in complex systems

Control of multiphoton transitions is demonstrated for a multilevel system by generalizing the instantaneous phase of any chirped pulse as individual terms of a Taylor series expansion. In the case of a simple two-level system, all odd terms in the series lead to population inversion while the even terms lead to self-induced transparency. The results hold for multiphoton transitions that do not have any lower-order photon resonance or any intermediate virtual state dynamics within the laser pulse width.