This work explores the effect of phase relaxation on the population transfer efficiency in stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP). The study is based on the Liouville equation, which is solved analytically in the adiabatic limit. The transfer efficiency of STIRAP is found to decrease exponentially with the dephasing rate; this effect is stronger for shorter pulse delays and weaker for larger delays, since the transition time is found to be inversely proportional to the pulse delay. Moreover, it is found that the transfer efficiency of STIRAP in the presence of dephasing does not depend on the peak Rabi frequencies at all, as long as they are sufficiently large to enforce adiabatic evolution; hence increasing the field intensity cannot reduce the dephasing losses. It is shown also that for any dephasing rate, the final populations of the initial state and the intermediate state are equal. For strong dephasing all three populations tend to $\frac{1}{3}$.

• Received 19 August 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.70.063409