Adaptive control of quantum phase in Rydberg wave packets

Summary form only given.We have devised and implemented a method to program quantum phase in Rydberg wave packets. Our method involves several recently developed techniques all acting in concert. Furthermore, the method is quite general: one need not even know the details of the atomic potential or the optical pulse shape in order to construct the desired phase function! This is because the method relies on adaptive feedback of direct phase information from the system. Below we give some details. A regenerative amplifier was seeded by 100-fs pulses from a Ti:sapphire oscillator.