  We propose a technique which produces nearly complete ionization of the
population of a discrete state coupled to a continuum by a two-photon
transition via a lossy intermediate state whose lifetime is much shorter than
the interaction duration. We show that using counterintuitively ordered pulses,
as in stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), wherein the pulse coupling
the intermediate state to the continuum precedes and partly overlaps the pulse
coupling the initial and intermediate states, greatly increases the ionization
signal and strongly reduces the population loss due to spontaneous emission
through the lossy state. For strong spontaneous emission from that state,
however, the ionization is never complete because the dark state required for
STIRAP does not exist. We demonstrate that this drawback can be eliminated
almost completely by creating a laser-induced continuum structure (LICS) by
embedding a third discrete state into the continuum with a third control laser.
This LICS introduces some coherence into the continuum, which enables a
STIRAP-like population transfer into the continuum. A highly accurate analytic
description is developed and numerical results are presented for Gaussian pulse
shapes.
