Bose-stimulated Raman adiabatic passage in photoassociation

We analyze coherent two-color photoassociation of a Bose-Einstein condensate, focusing on stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) in free-bound-bound transitions from atoms to molecules. This problem raises an interest because STIRAP has been predicted to be absent in the nondegenerate case [Javanainen and Mackle. Phys. Rev. A 58, R789 (1998)]. Nevertheless, we find that Bose stimulation enhances. the free-bound dipole matrix element for an atomic condensate, and photoassociative STIRAP turns out to be a viable mechanism for converting an atomic condensate to a molecular condensate with near-unit efficiency.