  We exploit a microscopically derived master equation for the study of STIRAP
in the presence of decay from the auxiliary level toward the initial and final
state, and compare our results with the predictions obtained from a
phenomenological model previously used [P. A. Ivanov, N. V. Vitanov, and K.
Bergmann, Phys. Rev. A 72, 053412 (2005)]. It is shown that our approach
predicts a much higher efficiency. The effects of temperature are also taken
into account, proving that in b-STIRAP thermal pumping can increase the
efficiency of the population transfer.
