  We present a general and versatile technique of population transfer based on
{\it parallel adiabatic passage} by femtosecond shaped pulses. Their amplitude
and phase are specifically designed to optimize the adiabatic passage
corresponding to parallel eigenvalues at all times. We show that this technique
allows the robust adiabatic population transfer in a Raman system with the
total pulse area as low as 3 $\pi$, corresponding to a fluence of one order of
magnitude below the conventional stimulated Raman adiabatic passage process.
This process of short duration, typically pico- and subpicosecond, is easily
implementable with the modern pulse shaper technology and opens the possibility
of ultrafast robust population transfer with interesting applications in
quantum information processing.
