Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage from an atomic to a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate

The process of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) was analyzed in a three-dimensional mean-field theory, including atom-atom interactions and non resonant intermediate levels. The optimal strategies in STRAP were identified which allowed to maintain high conversion efficiencies with smaller Rabi frequencies and under experimentally less demanding conditions. The analysis showed that the STIRAP process was feasible at larger Rabi frequencies than anticipated from a crude single-mode lossless analysis.