Figure 3

Left: Efficiency of a π-pulse as a function of detuning \(\Delta =\omega _{at}-\omega _{L}\) for a monochromatic and a polychromatic [spectrum (B), \(N=10\), \(\epsilon =1\)] pulse without considering spontaneous emission, with \(T=100~\mu \text{K}\), \(\Omega _{T}=4.8\text{MHz}\) and \(\sigma _{\text{beam}}=5~\text{mm}\). The efficiency is obtained by taking the cloud-averaged transition probability at the chosen π-time (monochromatic: first Rabi maximum; polychromatic: middle of the first plateau). Due to their larger bandwidth, polychromatic pulses are more resilient to detunings. Right: Efficiency of a π- and 5π-pulse as a function of cloud temperature in the monochromatic and two polychromatic cases [combs (A) and (B), \(N=10\), \(\epsilon =1\)] with \(\Omega _{T}=4.8\text{MHz}\), \(\sigma _{\text{pos}}=1~\text{mm}\) and \(\sigma _{\text{beam}}=5~\text{mm}\). Polychromatic pulses enable a higher efficiency up to large temperatures, which can be maintained over several Rabi cycles by removing the comb’s resonant component