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Physical Review A

Coherent light scattering in isotropic media: Theory of degenerate four-wave mixing in vibrational spectroscopy

Andrei A. Suvernev

Published Jul 1, 1994• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The expression for the light-scattering intensity is deduced using the general perturbation expansion for a stationary solution of the Liouville equation. The principal importance of translational symmetry for coherent spectroscopy is rigorously shown. The expressions for the degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) signal intensity as well as for its polarization are derived in the case of fast translational relaxation (Dicke narrowing). The instructive relationship between the index of refraction, the absorption spectrum, and the DFWM is established.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.50.107

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Annual Meeting Optical Society of America•Jan 1, 1993•0 citations
The expression for the light-scattering intensity is deduced using the general perturbation expansion for a stationary solution of the Liouville equation. The principal importance of translational symmetry for coherent spectroscopy is rigorously shown. The expressions for the degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) signal intensity as well as for its polarization are derived in the case of fast translational relaxation (Dicke narrowing). The instructive relationship between the index of refraction, the absorption spectrum, and the DFWM is established.
Degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) spectroscopy is a potentially powerful technique for quantitative measurement of minor species in gas-phase media [1-3]. In this paper we compare the DFWM signal levels and lineshapes obtained using two different phase-matching geometries: the phase-conjugate geometry and the forward phase-matched geometry. DFWM signal levels are calculated by solving the time-dependent density matrix equations using direct numerical integration (DNI) [4, 5] for a two-level system interacting with three laser beams. This numerical analysis includes the effects of molecular motion, intermolecular collisions, and high laser intensities, all of which have been shown to affect the DFWM signal level.
The effects of finite-bandwidth excitation are incorporated into the theoretical treatment of degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) spectroscopy by employing a general description of applied electromagnetic fields, thereby permitting the transient nature of typical laser sources to be taken explicitly into account. A computationally efficient perturbative (weak-field) formalism is developed by exploiting exponentially-decaying wave forms as a flexible basis for expanding the temporal envelope functions of incident quasimonochromatic pulses. This approach has the distinct advantage of yielding time-domain response integrals that can be evaluated analytically since they are almost as simple in form as their monochromatic counterparts. The resulting frequency-domain expressions for the induced DFWM signal polarization reflect the pronounced influence of finite-bandwidth excitation without needing to cobble such behavior into phenomenological rates for population decay and coherence dissipation. Spectral line shapes are examined for both stationary and nonstationary ensembles of isolated (gas-phase) target molecules, with the latter analyses demonstrating the systematic degradation of spatial discrimination introduced by nonmonochromatic implementations of the sub-Doppler (phase-conjugate) four-wave mixing scheme. In keeping with recent experimental findings, the precipitous drop in signal intensity accompanying the action of collisional dephasing processes is predicted to be tempered greatly by the use of short-duration excitation pulses.
We have investigated the dependence of degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) spectra of gas-phase I2I_{2}I2​ on laser intensity, molecular transition moments and molecular concentration. The experimental results are interpreted by using a weak-field theory of DFWM derived with a density-matrix method. For comparison, the direct absorption spectra of I2I_{2}I2​ are also presented. We have demonstrated, in our observed DFWM spectra of I2I_{2}I2​, that the spectral resolution in DFWM can be better than that of linear optical spectroscopy. The outcome has also been elucidated by the theoretical result.
Saturation effects in gas-phase degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) are investigated for conditions of interest for diagnostic applications in flames and plasmas. In particular, the case in which Doppler and collisional broadening are comparable, as is often the case for flame species such as NO and OH, is investigated. DFWM line shapes and signal intensities are calculated nonperturbatively and compared with high-resolution laser measurements. In the nonperturbative calculations the time-dependent density-matrix equations for a two-level system interacting with three laser fields are integrated directly on a grid of spatial locations along the phase-matching axis. The electric-field amplitude for the DFWM signal is determined by multiplying the time-varying, laser-induced polarization at each grid point by the appropriate phase factor and then by summing over all grid points. The calculations are in excellent agreement with measurements of DFWM line shapes and signal intensities for NO in a buffer gas of He over a wide range of He pressure. Under saturation conditions the pressure dependence of the DFWM signal is reduced greatly compared with the unsaturated case. The signal level is still dependent on the ratio of pure dephasing to quenching collisions, even for saturation conditions. From the standpoint of minimal dependence on collisional processes it appears that operation with pump-laser intensities approximately equal to the saturation intensity is optimal. The dependence of the DFWM line shape and signal intensity on the ratio of probe to pump-laser intensity is also investigated.
The effect of Doppler broadening on degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) signal intensities in the regime of high pump and probe laser intensities is investigated theoretically. DFWM reflectivities are calculated by solving the time-dependent density-matrix equations for a two-level system interacting with three laser fields. The density-matrix equations are integrated directly in the time domain on a grid of spatial locations along the phase-matching axis; the DFWM signal level is then calculated by summation of the polarization contribution (with the appropriate phase factor) from each of the spatial grid points. For the case in which the Doppler and the collisional linewidths are comparable, the DFWM reflectivity is found to be inversely proportional to the factor 1 + (bΔωD/ΔωC)2, where ΔωD is the Doppler width, ΔωC is the collisional width, and b is weakly dependent on the pump and the probe laser powers. We developed an analytical expression for the reflectivity of a line that is both collision and Doppler broadened by dividing the widely used Abrams and Lind expression for homogeneous reflectivity Rhom by the factor 1 + (bΔωD/ΔωC)2. This modified reflectivity expression is found to give accurate results for the DFWM reflectivity over a wide range of values for the ratio of Doppler to collisional width. With this modified Abrams–Lind expression, strategies for quantitative DFWM concentration measurements in flames and plasmas are proposed and analyzed. We conclude that, by selection of the appropriate rotational transition, a DFWM reflectivity that is directly proportional to the square of the total species number density can be obtained over a wide range of temperature for constant-laser-intensity spatial profile mapping in flames.