Decay dynamics of a metastable state in a time-varying electric field: a three-level prototypical system

Abstract

In a numerical experiment, the dynamics of natural decay of a metastable state is shown to be strongly affected by the presence of an external time-varying electric field of high intensity. The metastable state, depending upon its level width, is shown to be stabilized by a near-resonant electric field. The applied field may even cause population transfer to a neighboring bound level that is not directly populated by the natural decay process. The effects of continuous and pulsed perturbations are both analyzed numerically, and perturbation, theoretically.