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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Photon echo spectroscopy in the single optical-cycle regime

Maxim S. Pshenichnikov, Andrius Baltuška, D. A. Wiersma

Published Nov 11, 2002• 0 citations

Abstract

Summary form only given. A very high temporal resolution and a broad bandwidth are but two advantages provided by the use of extremely short sub-5-fs pulses in a nonlinear spectroscopic experiment. However, the applicability of the standard theoretical description becomes questionable for the pulses that consist merely of a couple of optical oscillations. Far instance, the conventionally employed slowly varying envelope approximation, implying that the change of the pulse amplitude on the duration of an optical cycle is negligible compared to the magnitude of the amplitude itself, can no longer be maintained. Furthermore, the phase-matching bandwidth that is limited due to dispersion in the nonlinear medium rapidly gains importance with the increase of the spectral width of the pulse. Another point of serious concern is the frequency-dependent variation in the sensitivity of signal photodetectors. In combination, these features result in what is known as a spectral-filter effect. Finally, artificial lengthening of the experimental transients is a direct consequence of the noncollinear geometry employed in spectroscopic experiments. We present a theoretical analysis which thoroughly reexamines the formalism of ultrafast photon echo spectroscopy. We obtain a general expression for the echo signal, which is valid even for single-cycle-pulse applications. The derived formalism is applied to photon-echo spectroscopy on the hydrated electron with 5-fs pulses.

DOI: 10.1109/cleoe.2000.909672

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Summary form only given. A very high temporal resolution and a broad bandwidth are but two advantages provided by the use of extremely short sub-5-fs pulses in a nonlinear spectroscopic experiment. However, the applicability of the standard theoretical description becomes questionable for the pulses that consist merely of a couple of optical oscillations. Far instance, the conventionally employed slowly varying envelope approximation, implying that the change of the pulse amplitude on the duration of an optical cycle is negligible compared to the magnitude of the amplitude itself, can no longer be maintained. Furthermore, the phase-matching bandwidth that is limited due to dispersion in the nonlinear medium rapidly gains importance with the increase of the spectral width of the pulse. Another point of serious concern is the frequency-dependent variation in the sensitivity of signal photodetectors. In combination, these features result in what is known as a spectral-filter effect. Finally, artificial lengthening of the experimental transients is a direct consequence of the noncollinear geometry employed in spectroscopic experiments. We present a theoretical analysis which thoroughly reexamines the formalism of ultrafast photon echo spectroscopy. We obtain a general expression for the echo signal, which is valid even for single-cycle-pulse applications. The derived formalism is applied to photon-echo spectroscopy on the hydrated electron with 5-fs pulses.

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In transient spectroscopy, the time-resolution is usually limited by the pulse width or the risetime of light sources or equivalent perturbers. In the extremely short time region, however, its improvement by shortening the pulse width is not an easy way even with the recent development of femtosecond pulse technique. We propose here a new method of transient spectroscopy were the time resolution is not limited by the light duration tp but limited only by the correlation time τc of light sources, being generally much shorter than tp. A temporally incoherent light has a short τc corresponding to the reciprocal bandwidth, and appears like a single pulse of duration τc in the auto-correlation measurement. This kind of light is therefore expected to play essentially the same role as a short pulse in nonlinear spectroscopy utilizing the auto-correlation technique. We present here a basic theory and an experiment which confirm this idea.