We study the process of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) under the influence of a nontrivial solid-state environment, particularly the effect of two-level fluctuators (TLFs) as they are frequently present in solid-state devices. When the amplitudes of the driving pulses used in STIRAP are in resonance with the level spacing of the fluctuators, the quality of the protocol, i.e., the transferred population, decreases sharply. In general, the effect can not be reduced by speeding up the STIRAP process. We also discuss the effect of a structured noise environment on the process of coherent tunneling by adiabatic passage (CTAP). The effect of a weakly structured environment or TLFs with short coherence times on STIRAP and CTAP can be described by the Bloch-Redfield theory. For a strongly structured environment, a higher-dimensional approach must be used, where the TLFs are treated as part of the system.

• Received 2 February 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.85.174515