Coherent population transfer in Rydberg potassium atom by a single frequency-chirped laser pulse

By using the time-dependent multilevel approach, we have calculated the coherent population transfer among the quantum states of potassium atom by a single frequency-chirped laser pulse. The results show that the population can be efficiently transferred to a target state and be trapped there by using an `intuitive' or a `counter-intuitive' frequency sweep laser pulse in the case of `narrowband' frequency-chirped laser pulse. It is also found that a pair of sequential `broadband' frequency-chirped laser pulses can efficiently transfer population from one ground state of the \varLambda atom to the other one.