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International Reviews in Physical Chemistry

Molecular, multiresonant coherent four-wave mixing spectroscopy

John Curtis Wright, Roger J. Carlson, Gregory B. Hurst, John K. Steehler, Michael T. Riebe, Bradford B. Price, Dinh C. Nguyen, Steven H. Lee

Published Oct 1, 1991• 60 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recent research has expanded the capabilities of four-wave mixing by providing it with component selectivity, site selectivity, and mode selectivity. The selectivity is achieved by taking advantage of the three resonance enhancements that occur in a four-wave mixing process. New spectral scanning strategies allow one to scan a single resonance while maintaining the other two resonances at constant values. The constant resonances can be used to select a specific component, a specific site within an inhomogeneously broadened envelope of a component, and/or a specific vibrational or vibronic mode of that site. The scanned resonance will then contain enhanced features corresponding to the particular component, site, and/or mode that was chosen by the constant resonances. These component and site selective capabilities of the four-wave mixing complement the single vibronic level fluorescence methods. The relative transition intensities from a specific component or site reflect the mode coupling between the vibrational and vibronic modes. Since the four-wave mixing is fully resonant in these experiments, saturation effects play a dominant role and cannot be ignored. This review presents a complete discussion of the theoretical and experimental factors that control the fully resonant four-wave mixing. It shows examples of the component selectivity and the line narrowing capabilities. It also provides examples of how mode selection can identify mode coupling through the relative intensities of different vibrational features.

DOI
10.1080/01442359109353262

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Recent research has expanded the capabilities of four-wave mixing by providing it with component selectivity, site selectivity, and mode selectivity. The selectivity is achieved by taking advantage of the three resonance enhancements that occur in a four-wave mixing process. New spectral scanning strategies allow one to scan a single resonance while maintaining the other two resonances at constant values. The constant resonances can be used to select a specific component, a specific site within an inhomogeneously broadened envelope of a component, and/or a specific vibrational or vibronic mode of that site. The scanned resonance will then contain enhanced features corresponding to the particular component, site, and/or mode that was chosen by the constant resonances. These component and site selective capabilities of the four-wave mixing complement the single vibronic level fluorescence methods. The relative transition intensities from a specific component or site reflect the mode coupling between the vibrational and vibronic modes. Since the four-wave mixing is fully resonant in these experiments, saturation effects play a dominant role and cannot be ignored. This review presents a complete discussion of the theoretical and experimental factors that control the fully resonant four-wave mixing. It shows examples of the component selectivity and the line narrowing capabilities. It also provides examples of how mode selection can identify mode coupling through the relative intensities of different vibrational features.
Four-wave mixing processes with double and triple resonances are discussed in detail. Explicit expressions for the resonant nonlinear susceptibilities of various cases are derived. It is shown that in some cases, four-wave mixing can yield a spectrum with reduced inhomogeneous broadening. Possible applications of multiresonant four-wave mixing as a spectroscopic technique are considered. They include high-resolution spectroscopy, deduction of transition matrix elements, study of transitions between excited states, measurement of longitudinal relaxation times, distinction between resonant Raman scattering and resonant fluorescence, etc. Selective polarization arrangement allows us to suppress the nonresonant background, separately measure the real and imaginary parts of the resonant nonlinear susceptibility, minimize the effects of absorption and laser intensity fluctuations, and greatly enhance the signal-to-noise ratio.
Resonance-enhanced four-wave-mixing processes were studied in molecular iodine by detection of a wave generated at frequency ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{3}$=2${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{1}$-${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{2}$ for a wide range of Raman frequencies (${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{1}$-${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\omega}}}_{2}$). On the basis of known spectroscopic constants of the two electronic states involved, the electronic ground state X1{\mathit{X}}^{1}X1${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}}_{\mathit{g}}^{+}$ and the electronic excited state B3{\mathit{B}}^{3}B3${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Pi}}}_{\mathit{u}0}^{+}$, an interpretation of the spectral features in terms of three essentially different four-wave-mixing processes is given. Resonance enhancement through bound states with discrete energy levels and the enhancement effect by dissociative continuum states are considered. In addition to resonance-enhanced coherent anti-Stokes Raman-scattering (CARS) processes, in which the Raman resonances are in the electronic ground state, two resonant schemes are identified in I2{\mathrm{I}}_{2}I2​, in which Raman resonances in an excited state are probed: excited-state parametric and nonparametric CARS. The latter process is an example of electronic population transfer in a four-wave-mixing cycle.
The physics of the degenerate four-wave mixing process for resonant transitions between two degenerate energy levels is investigated by direct numerical integration of the time-dependent density matrix equations. The Zeeman structure of the upper and lower energy levels is included in a multistate formulation of the density matrix equations. The inclusion of the Zeeman structure enables the investigation of the degenerate four-wave mixing process for different polarization configurations of the forward pump, backward pump, and probe beams. Saturation curves and lineshapes are calculated for different polarization configurations and for numerous low-J transitions. At low laser intensity, the results of our calculations are in excellent agreement with perturbation theory in terms of the relative intensities of the degenerate four-wave mixing signal for linear polarization configurations. As the laser intensity increases and the resonance starts to saturate, we find in general that the relative degenerate four-wave mixing reflectivity increases for the crossed polarization configurations compared to the parallel polarization configuration because the saturation intensity is higher. However, for some resonance transitions, some of the crossed polarization configurations saturate at lower laser intensities than the parallel polarization configuration, even though the reflectivity for these crossed polarization configurations is much lower than for the parallel polarization configuration in the perturbative intensity limit. This result is explained in terms of the coupling of the various Zeeman states during the degenerate four-wave mixing interaction for specific polarization configurations. The effect of saturation on the resonance line shapes for the different polarization configurations is also investigated. Finally, a limited number of calculations are performed for resonances that are Doppler broadened as well as collision broadened. The effect of saturation on the reflectivity of the crossed polarization configurations compared to the parallel polarization configuration is even more significant for resonances with comparable Doppler and collisional broadening.
The delayed or time-domain four-wave-mixing experiment is treated in the regime of intense near-resonant pulses. The interaction with the radiation during both pump and probe pulses is considered to all powers of the electric field amplitude. Analytical results are obtained for an effective four-level system. These include the dependence of the coherence amplitudes on the ratio of the pump-field intensities when there is a large vibrational discrepancy between ground and excited electronic states and a general solution for the unitary time development during the probe pulse. For the first time, delayed coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering is detected from highly dilute (10-ppm) guest molecules. Illustrative examples are presented for the system of pentacene in benzoic acid at low temperature. Vibronic-free induction decay and the effect of field inhomogeneity across the beam profile are found to be essential for understanding the observed intensity and spectral distribution of the signal beam in the region of optimum pulse intensity.
A new technique for overcoming inhomogeneous broadening in condensed matter is reported. Phase-matchinginduced frequency selectivity associated with multiresonant four-wave mixing is explored in detail for the first time to our knowledge and shown to give laser-limited linewidths that are more than 10 times narrower than the inhomogeneous width of an intermediate resonance in LiTbF (4). The anomalous dispersion associated with the resonance. was also measured, and model calculations suggest that significantly greater narrowing is feasible.
We explain the utility of third-order nonlinear susceptibility, χ (3) (ω 2 ; ±ω 1 , ∓ω1{\mp}\omega_{1}∓ω1​, ω 2 ), for the observation of resonances with homogeneous widths from inhomogeneously broadened distributions in three-level systems related to Raman or two-photon allowed electronic transitions. The line narrowing and high resolution capabilities are demonstrated theoretically using a model for inhomogeneous distributions of transitions in which we regard an absorption spectrum as the composition of some inhomogeneously broadened substructures. The experimental methods to separate a signal having frequency ω 2 from ingoing beam at the same frequency are outlined.