Enhancing the photoluminescence and depressing the background emission are important problems in rare earth ion-doped materials. In this letter, the two-photon absorption (TPA) probability in a Pr3+ ion system is enhanced by a factor of 12.3 by a \pi-phase step scanning of ultrashort laser pulses. This level is significantly higher than that achieved by a transform-limit pulse. However, the laser intensity of shaped pulse is reduced to 37% of the initial transform-limited pulse. In this method,
