Single 3.3 fs multiple plate compression light source in ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy

Abstract

Ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy is a powerful tool to reveal excited state dynamics in various materials. Conventionally, probe pulses are generated via bulk supercontinuum generation or (noncollinear) optical parametric amplifiers whilst pump pulses are generated separately using (noncollinear) optical parametric amplifiers. These systems are limited by either their spectral density, stability, spectral range, and/or temporal compressibility. Recently, a new intense broadband light source is being developed, the multi-plate compression, which promises to overcome these limitations. In this paper, we analyze the supercontinuum generated by a single Multiple Plate Compression system to set a benchmark for its use in the field of ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy. We have compressed the supercontinuum to 3.3 fs using chirp mirrors alone, making it an excellent candidate for pump-probe experiments requiring high temporal resolution. Furthermore, the single light source can be used to generate both probe and pump pulses due to its high spectral density (>14.5 nJ/nm) between 490 and 890 nm. The intensity has an average shot-to-shot relative standard deviation of 4.6 % over 490 to 890 nm, calculated over 2,000 sequential shots. By using only 1,000 shot pairs, a $$\Delta T/T$$ Δ T / T noise level of $$2.6\times 10^{-4}$$ 2.6 × 10 - 4 RMS is achieved. Finally, as a proof of concept, the transient absorption spectrum of a methylammonium lead iodide perovskite film is taken, showing great signal to noise with only 1,000 shot pairs. These results show great potential for the employment of this technique in other spectroscopic techniques such as coherent multidimensional spectroscopy.

Double-Pass Multiple-Plate Continuum for High-Temporal-Contrast Nonlinear Pulse Compression

“…The enhanced spectral density in the visible makes DPMPC attractive in the spectroscopic investigation of photovoltaic materials (Li et al, 2019). With the proper dispersion management, single-cycle femtosecond pulses can be produced from the SC spectrum, which will provide an unprecedented temporal resolution for capturing extremely fast spectroscopic dynamics (Tamming et al, 2021;Ashoka et al, 2022).…”

“…A straightforward solution to improve the pulse width of industrial grade Yb-doped lasers is using a nonlinear pulse compressor. Various nonlinear pulse compression techniques, such as filamentation (Hauri et al, 2005;Zaïr et al, 2007), photonic-crystal fiber (PCF) (Ermolov et al, 2019;Köttig et al, 2020), hollow-core fiber (HCF) (Jeong et al, 2018;Nagy et al, 2019), multi-pass cell (Weitenberg et al, 2017;Lavenu et al, 2018;Ueffing et al, 2018), and multiple-plate continuum (MPC) (Lu et al, 2014(Lu et al, , 2019Beetar et al, 2018), have been explored and applied to metrology, time-resolved spectroscopy (Tamming et al, 2021), generation of coherent extreme ultraviolet (Huang et al, 2018), and terahertz radiation (Kanda et al, 2021). Filamentation is relatively easy to setup and can produce a broadband spectrum.…”

Vacuum‐Deposited Inorganic Perovskite Light‐Emitting Diodes with External Quantum Efficiency Exceeding 10% via Composition and Crystallinity Manipulation of Emission Layer under High Vacuum

“…TA measurements were conducted by using a home‐made system that can flexibly support excitation at 429 nm and probe spectrum across 420–550 nm. [ 61 , 62 , 63 ] The J–V–L characteristics of devices in a glove box were measured simultaneously using a 2636A source meter (Keithley Instruments) as a driving source, while the total forward luminous flux was measured by an integrating sphere system with a calibrated Si photodetector. [ 64 ] Luminance was calculated assuming a Lambertian emission characteristic of the devices.…”

Sub-30 fs Yb-fiber laser source based on a hybrid cascaded nonlinear compression approach

“…Since then, a number of research groups have made efforts to use MPC technology to obtain few-cycle pulses. For example, Lu et al achieved the compression of 1030 nm laser pulses with pulse duration of 170 fs to 3.21 fs in a single cycle by a two-stage MPC system [14] ; He et al obtained a continuum covering 460 to 950 nm using seven thin solid plates and compressed the pulses to 5.4 fs [15] ; Beetar et al compressed 280 fs laser pulses to 18 fs using the MPC technique [16] ; Tamming et al obtained 3.3 fs pulses by a single MPC system and further used the pulses in a transient absorption spectroscopy experiment [17] . However, in order to meet the spectral broadening condition, which is high nonlinearity in bulk material, a high-energy pump laser source is required.…”