Chirped multiphoton adiabatic passage for a four-level ladder-type Rydberg excitation

We develop a multiphoton adiabatic passage to realize a highly efficient Rydberg excitation in a four-level ladder-type atomic system. The adiabatic passage is based on the existence of a novel quasidark state in the cascade excitation system where the frequencies of the lasers are appropriately chirped with time. We also investigate the influence of the interatomic Rydberg interaction on the passage and extend its application to the preparation of antiblockade Rydberg atom pairs in the Rydberg blockade regime.