Mollow-like triplets in ultra-fast resonant absorption

Abstract

We show that resonant absorption of smooth laser fields can yield Mollow-like triplet patterns. General conditions for such triplets are derived and illustrated with a super-Gaussian pulse sequence. Gaussian pulses can not exhibit triplets, super-Gaussian pulses can form triplets depending on the pulse area and flat-top pulses can produce absorption triplets after one Rabi cycle. Our results are compared side-by-side with resonance fluorescence to emphasize similarities and differences between these unlike observables. In the high-intensity limit, we show that the central absorption peak is asymmetric, which we attribute to non-linear photoionization, beyond two-level atomic physics.