Summary
Continuous progress in the development of light sources for the generation of tunable ultrashort pulses from the near-infrared to all the visible range provides a very efficient tool for spectroscopic techniques able to follow ultrafast dynamical processes in matter. Second-order nonlinear optical processes like Optical Parametric Amplification (OPA) have demonstrated the capability of generating light pulses with durations down to few cycles of the carrier wave. The aim of this paper is to introduce the basic concepts for the generation of tunable ultrashort pulses and show their application to ultrafast spectroscopy. We will discuss the principles of parametric amplification and the main criteria for the design of broadband OPAs; we will also illustrate some of the schemes providing ultrashort pulses in the spectral ranges from the ultraviolet to the infrared, offering a comprehensive overview of the state of the art of the current research activity in this rapidly evolving field. An important requirement for the applications of ultrashort pulses is the capability to measure the amplitude and phase of their electric field; we will discuss a rich ensemble of spectrographic, interferometric or phase-scanning techniques for the temporal characterization of ultrashort pulses. Pump-probe techniques with broadband pulses and more recently two-dimensional spectroscopic techniques allow to follow in great detail complex dynamical processes. The few examples reported in this review just provide a sample of what is already a vast class of ultrafast phenomena, which can be studied nowadays in real time.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahmed H. Zewail, Femtochemistry: Atomic-Scale Dynamics of the Chemical Bond, J. Phys. Chem. A, 104 (2000) 5660.
Fork R. L., Greene B. I. and Shank C. V., Generation of optical pulses shorter than 0.1 psec by colliding pulse mode locking, Appl. Phys. Lett., 38 (1981) 671.
Knox W. H., Downer M. C., Fork R. L. and Shank C. V., Amplified femtosecond optical pulses and continuum generation at 5-kHz repetition rate, Opt. Lett., 9 (1984) 552.
Fork R. L., Brito Cruz C. H., Becker P. C. and Shank C. V., Compression of optical pulses to six femtoseconds by using cubic phase compensation, Opt. Lett., 12 (1987) 483.
Moulton P. F., Spectroscopic and laser characteristics of Ti:Al2O3, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 3 (1986) 125.
Spence D. E., Kean P. N. and Sibbett W., 60-fsec pulse generation from a self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser, Opt. Lett., 16 (1991) 42.
Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou, Compression of amplified chirped optical pulses, Opt. Commun., 56 (1985) 219.
Backus S., Durfee C. G., Murnane M. M. and Kapteyn H. C., High power ultrafast lasers, Rev. Sci. Instrum., 69 (1998) 1207.
Joseph Anthony Giordmaine and Robert C. Miller, Tunable coherent parametric oscillation in LiNbO3 at optical frequencies, Phys. Rev. Lett., 14 (1965) 973.
Robin M. Hochstrasser, Two-dimensional spectroscopy at infrared and optical frequencies, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 104 (2007) 14190.
Shaul Mukamel, Multidimensional femtosecond correlation spectroscopies of electronic and vibrational excitations, Annu. Rev. Phys. Chem., 51 (2000) 691.
Murray K. Reed, Michael K. Steiner-Shepard and Daniel K. Negus, Widely tunable femtosecond optical parametric amplifier at 250 kHz with a Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier, Opt. Lett., 19 (1994) 1855.
Bradler M., Baum P. and Riedle E., Femtosecond continuum generation in bulk laser host materials with sub-μJ pump pulses, Appl. Phys. B, 97 (2009) 561.
Brida D., Manzoni C., Cirmi G., Marangoni M., Bonora S., Villoresi P., De Silvestri S. and Cerullo G., Few-optical-cycle pulses tunable from the visible to the mid-infrared by optical parametric amplifiers, J. Opt., 12 (2010) 013001.
Mücke O. D., Tritschler T. and Wegener M., Few-cycle laser pulse generation and its applications, Topics Appl. Phys., 95 (2004) 379.
Shen Y. R., Principles of nonlinear optics (Wiley-Interscience, New York) 1984.
Robert W. Boyd, Nonlinear Optics (Academic Press) 2003.
Gunnar Arisholm, General numerical methods for simulating second-order nonlinear interactions in birefringent media, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 14 (1997) 2543.
Manzoni C., Cirmi G., Brida D., De Silvestri S. and Cerullo G., Optical-parametric-generation process driven by femtosecond pulses: Timing and carrier-envelope phase properties, Phys. Rev. A, 79 (2009) 033818.
Lang T., Harth A., Matyschok J., Binhammer T., Schultze M. and Morgner U., Impact of temporal, spatial and cascaded effects on the pulse formation in ultra-broadband parametric amplifiers, Opt. Express, 21 (2013) 949.
Yakovlev V. V., Kohler B. and Wilson K. R., Broadly tunable 30-fs pulses produced by optical parametric amplification, Opt. Lett., 19 (1994) 2000.
Armstrong J. A., Bloembergen N., Ducuing J. and Pershan P. S., Interactions between Light Waves in a Nonlinear Dielectric, Phys. Rev., 127 (1962) 1918.
Valentin G. Dmitriev, Gagik G. Gurzadyan, David N. Nikogosyan and Helmut K. V. Lotsch, Optics of Nonlinear Crystals, in Handbook of Nonlinear Optical Crystals, Vol. 64 of Springer Series in Optical Sciences (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg) 1999, pp. 3–66.
David S. Hum and Martin M. Fejer, Quasi-phasematching, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, 8 (2007) 180.
Manzoni C. and Cerullo G., Design criteria for ultrafast optical parametric amplifiers, J. Opt., 18 (2016) 103501.
Nisoli M., Danielius R., Piskarskas A., De Silvestri S., Magni V., Valiulis G., Varanavicius A. and Svelto O., Highly efficient parametric conversion of femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser pulses at 1 kHz, Opt. Lett., 19 (1994) 1973.
Giulio Cerullo and Sandro De Silvestri, Ultrafast optical parametric amplifiers, Rev. Sci. Instrum., 74 (2003) 1.
Harris S. E., Oshman M. K. and Byer R. L., Observation of Tunable Optical Parametric Fluorescence, Phys. Rev. Lett., 18 (1967) 732.
Marco Marangoni, Roberto Osellame, Roberta Ramponi, Giulio Cerullo, Andy Steinmann and Uwe Morgner, Near-infrared optical parametric amplifier at 1MHz directly pumped by a femtosecond oscillator, Opt. Lett., 32 (2007) 1489.
Heiko Linnenbank and Stefan Linden, High repetition rate femtosecond double pass optical parametric generator with more than 2W tunable output in the NIR, Opt. Express, 22 (2014) 18072.
Robert R. Alfano, The Supercontinuum Laser Source (Springer) 2013.
Jinendra K. Ranka and Alexander L. Gaeta, Breakdown of the slowly varying envelope approximation in the self-focusing of ultrashort pulses, Opt. Lett., 23 (1998) 534.
Alexander L. Gaeta, Catastrophic Collapse of Ultrashort Pulses, Phys. Rev. Lett., 84 (2000) 3582.
Jukna V., Galinis J., Tamosauskas G., Majus D. and Dubietis A., Infrared extension of femtosecond supercontinuum generated by filamentation in solid-state media, Appl. Phys. B, 116 (2014) 477.
Robert Huber, Helmut Satzger, Wolfgang Zinth and Josef Wachtveitl, Noncollinear optical parametric amplifiers with output parameters improved by the application of a white light continuum generated in CaF2, Opt. Commun., 194 (2001) 443.
Pergament M., Kellert M., Kruse K., Wang J., Palmer G., Wissmann L., Wegner U. and Lederer M. J., High power burst-mode optical parametric amplifier with arbitrary pulse selection, Opt. Express, 22 (2014) 22202.
Murray K. Reed, Michael S. Armas, Michael K. Steiner-Shepard and Daniel K. Negus, 30-fs pulses tunable across the visible with a 100-kHz Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier, Opt. Lett., 20 (1995) 605.
Scott R. Greenfield and Michael R. Wasielewski, Near-transform-limited visible and near-IR femtosecond pulses from optical parametric amplification using Type II β-barium borate, Opt. Lett., 20 (1995) 1394.
Di Trapani P., Andreoni A., Solcia C., Banfi G. P., Danielius R., Piskarskas A. and Foggi P., Powerful sub-100-fs pulses broadly tunable in the visible from a blue-pumped parametric generator and amplifier, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 14 (1997) 1245.
Thomas S. Sosnowski, Paul B. Stephens and Theodore B. Norris, Production of 30-fs pulses tunable throughout the visible spectral region by a new technique in optical parametric amplification, Opt. Lett., 21 (1996) 140.
Wong K. S., Qui Z. R., Wang H. and Wong G. K. L., Efficient visible femtosecond optical parametric generator and amplifier using tilted pulse-front pumping, Opt. Lett., 22 (1997) 898.
Golubovic B. and Reed M. K., All-solid-state generation of 100-kHz tunable mid-infrared 50-fs pulses in type I and type II AgGaS2, Opt. Lett., 23 (1998) 1760.
Cerullo G., Nisoli M., Stagira S. and De Silvestri S., Sub-8-fs pulses from an ultrabroadband optical parametric amplifier in the visible, Opt. Lett., 23 (1998) 1283.
Shirakawa A., Sakane I., Takasaka M. and Kobayashi T., Sub-5-fs visible pulse generation by pulse-front-matched noncollinear optical parametric amplification, Appl. Phys. Lett., 74 (1999) 2268.
Zavelani-Rossi M., Cerullo G., De Silvestri S., Gallmann L., Matuschek N., Steinmeyer G., Keller U., Angelow G., Scheuer V. and Tschudi T., Pulse compression over a 170-THz bandwidth in the visible by use of only chirped mirrors, Opt. Lett., 26 (2001) 1155.
Peter Baum, Markus Breuer, Eberhard Riedle and Günter Steinmeyer, Brewster-angled chirped mirrors for broadband pulse compression without dispersion oscillations, Opt. Lett., 31 (2006) 2220.
Wilhelm T., Piel J. and Riedle E., Sub-20-fs pulses tunable across the visible from a blue-pumped single-pass noncollinear parametric converter, Opt. Lett., 22 (1997) 1494.
Giulio Cerullo, Mauro Nisoli and Sandro De Silvestri, Generation of 11 fs pulses tunable across the visible by optical parametric amplification, Appl. Phys. Lett., 71 (1997) 3616.
Akira Shirakawa and Takayoshi Kobayashi, Noncollinearly phase-matched femtosecond optical parametric amplification with a 2000 cm−1 bandwidth, Appl. Phys. Lett., 72 (1998) 147.
Andrius Baltušska, Takao Fuji and Takayoshi Kobayashi, Visible pulse compression to 4 fs by optical parametric amplification and programmable dispersion control, Opt. Lett., 27 (2002) 306.
Cerullo G., Nisoli M., Stagira S., De Silvestri S., Tempea G., Krausz F. and Ferencz K., Mirror-dispersion-controlled sub-10-fs optical parametric amplifier in the visible, Opt. Lett., 24 (1999) 1529.
Joosen W., Chambaret J. P., Antonetti A., Agostini P. and Petite G., Broadband femtosecond infrared parametric amplification in β-BaB2O4, Opt. Lett., 17 (1992) 133.
Danielius R., Piskarskas A., Righini R., Banfi G. P., Di Trapani P. and Sa’nta I., Tunable femtosecond pulses close to the transform limit from traveling-wave parametric conversion, Opt. Lett., 18 (1993) 1547.
Banfi G. P., Danielius R., Di Trapani P., Foggi P., Righini R. and Piskarskas A., Femtosecond traveling-wave parametric generation with lithium triborate, Opt. Lett., 18 (1993) 1633.
Seifert F., Petrov V. and Noack F., Sub-100-fs optical parametric generator pumped by a high-repetition-rate Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier system, Opt. Lett., 19 (1994) 837.
Petrov V., Seifert F. and Noack F., High repetition rate traveling wave optical parametric generator producing nearly bandwidth limited 50 fs infrared light pulses, Appl. Phys. Lett., 65 (1994) 268.
Nisoli M., Stagira S., De Silvestri S., Svelto O., Valiulis G. and Varanavicius A., Parametric generation of high-energy 14.5-fs light pulses at 1.5 μm, Opt. Lett., 23 (1998) 630.
Kent R. Wilson and Vladislav V. Yakovlev, Ultrafast rainbow: tunable ultrashort pulses from a solid-state kilohertz system, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 14 (1997) 444.
Schibli T. R., Kuzucu O., Jung-Won Kim, Ippen E. P., Fujimoto J. G., Kaertner F. X., Scheuer V. and Angelow G., Toward single-cycle laser systems, IEEE J. Sel. Topics Quantum Electron., 9 (2003) 990.
Rocio Borrego-Varillas, Aurelio Oriana, Federico Branchi, Sandro De Silvestri, Giulio Cerullo and Cristian Manzoni, Optimized ancillae generation for ultra-broadband two-dimensional spectral-shearing interferometry, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 32 (2015) 1851.
Siddiqui A. M., Cirmi G., Brida D., Kärtner F. X. and Cerullo G., Generation of < 7 fs pulses at 800 nm from a blue-pumped optical parametric amplifier at degeneracy. Opt. Lett., 34 (2009) 3592.
Schmidt C, Bühler J., Heinrich A.-C., Leitenstorfer A. and Brida D., Noncollinear parametric amplification in the near-infrared based on type-II phase matching, J. Opt., 17 (2015) 094003.
Cirmi G., Brida D., Manzoni C., Marangoni M., De Silvestri S. and Cerullo G., Few-optical-cycle pulses in the near-infrared from a noncollinear optical parametric amplifier, Opt. Lett., 32 (2007) 2396.
Erik Zeek, Kira Maginnis, Sterling Backus, Ulrich Russek, Margaret Murnane, Gérard Mourou, Henry Kapteyn and Gleb Vdovin, Pulse compression by use of deformable mirrors, Opt. Lett., 24 (1999) 493.
Daniel J. Kane and Rick Trebino, Characterization of Arbitrary Femtosecond Pulses Using Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., 29 (1993) 571.
Ivaylo Nikolov, Alexander Gaydardzhiev, Ivan Buchvarov, Pancho Tzankov, Frank Noack and Valentin Petrov, Ultrabroadband continuum amplification in the near infrared using BiB3O6 nonlinear crystals pumped at 800 nm, Opt. Lett., 32 (2007) 3342.
Backus S., Peatross J., Zeek Z., Rundquist A., Taft G., Murnane M. M. and Kapteyn H. C., 16-fs, 1-mJ ultraviolet pulses generated by third-harmonic conversion in air, Opt. Lett., 21 (1996) 665.
Graf U., Fiess M., Schultze M., Kienberger R., Krausz F. and Goulielmakis E., Intense few-cycle light pulses in the deep ultraviolet, Opt. Express, 16 (2008) 18956.
Florentin Reiter, Ulrich Graf, Martin Schultze, Wolfgang Schweinberger, Hartmut Schröder, Nicholas Karpowicz, Abdallah Mohammed Azzeer, Reinhard Kienberger, Ferenc Krausz and Eleftherios Goulielmakis, Generation of sub-3fs pulses in the deep ultraviolet, Opt. Lett., 35 (2010) 2248.
Charles G. Durfee, Sterling Backus, Margaret M. Murnane and Henry C. Kapteyn, Ultrabroadband phase-matched optical parametric generation in the ultraviolet by use of guided waves, Opt. Lett., 22 (1997) 1565.
Charles G. Durfee III, Sterling Backus, Henry C. Kapteyn and Margaret M. Murnane, Intense 8-fs pulse generation in the deep ultraviolet, Opt. Lett., 24 (1999) 697.
Yuichiro Kida, Jun Liu, Takahiro Teramoto and Takayoshi Kobayashi, Sub-10fs deep-ultraviolet pulses generated by chirped-pulse four-wave mixing, Opt. Lett., 35 (2010) 1807.
Rocio Borrego Varillas, Alessia Candeo, Daniele Viola, Marco Garavelli, Sandro De Silvestri, Giulio Cerullo and Cristian Manzoni, Microjoule-level, tunable sub-10fs UV pulses by broadband sum-frequency generation, Opt. Lett., 39 (2014) 3849.
Peter Baum, Stefan Lochbrunner and Eberhard Riedle, Zero-additional-phase SPIDER: full characterization of visible and sub-20-fs ultraviolet pulses, Opt. Lett., 29 (2004) 210.
Ursula Keller, Recent developments in compact ultrafast lasers, Nature, 424 (2003) 831.
Steinmeyer G., Sutter Dh., Gallmann L., Matuschek N. and Keller U., Frontiers in Ultrashort Pulse Generation: Pushing the Limits in Linear and Nonlinear Optics, Science, 286 (1999) 1507.
Wendel Wohlleben, Tiago Buckup, Jennifer L. Herek and Marcus Motzkus, Coherent control for spectroscopy and manipulation of biological dynamics, Chem. Phys. Chem., 6 (2005) 850.
Herschel Rabitz, Regina de Vivie-Riedle, Marcus Motzkus and Karl Kompa, Whither the Future of Controlling Quantum Phenomena?, Science, 288 (2000) 824.
Shaul Mukamel, Principles of Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy, Number 6, Oxford University Press on Demand, (1999).
Krausz F. and Ivanov M., Attosecond physics, Rev. Mod. Phys., 81 (2009) 163.
Ian A. Walmsley and Christophe Dorrer, Characterization of ultrashort electromagnetic pulses, Adv. Opt. Photon., 1 (2009) 308.
Rick Trebino, Frequency-resolved Optical Gating: The Measurement of Ultrashort Laser Pulses (Springer Science & Business Media) 2012.
Antoine Monmayrant, Sébastien Weber and Béatrice Chatel, A newcomer’s guide to ultrashort pulse shaping and characterization, J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys., 43 (2010) 103001.
Peter R. Griffiths and James A. De Haseth, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry, Vol. 171 (John Wiley & Sons) 2007.
Andrew Weiner, Ultrafast Optics, Vol. 72 (John Wiley & Sons) 2011.
Witold K. Surewicz, Henry H. Mantsch and Dennis Chapman, Determination of protein secondary structure by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy: A critical assessment, Biochemistry, 32 (1993) 389.
Lepetit L., Chériaux G. and Joffre M., Linear techniques of phase measurement by femtosecond spectral interferometry for applications in spectroscopy, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 12 (1995) 2467.
Weber H. P., Method for pulsewidth measurement of ultrashort light pulses generated by phase-locked lasers using nonlinear optics, J. Appl. Phys., 38 (1967) 2231.
Mindl T., Hefferle P., Schneider S. and Dorr F., Characterisation of a train of subpicosecond laser pulses by fringe resolved autocorrelation measurements, Appl. Phys. B, Photophys. Laser Chem., 31 (1983) 201.
Blount E. I. and Klauder J. R., Recovery of laser intensity from correlation data, J. Appl. Phys., 40 (1969) 2874.
Jean-Claude M. Diels, Joel J. Fontaine, Ian C. McMichael and Francesco Simoni, Control and measurement of ultrashort pulse shapes (in amplitude and phase) with femtosecond accuracy, Appl. Opt., 24 (1985) 1270.
Rick Trebino, Kenneth W. DeLong, David N. Fittinghoff, John N. Sweetser, Marco A. Krumbugel, Bruce A. Richman and Daniel J. Kane, Measuring ultrashort laser pulses in the time-frequency domain using frequency-resolved optical gating, Rev. Sci. Instrum., 68 (1997) 3277.
Daniel J. Kane and Rick Trebino, Single-shot measurement of the intensity and phase of an arbitrary ultrashort pulse by using frequency-resolved optical gating, Opt. Lett., 18 (1993) 823.
Jerome Paye, Malini Ramaswamy, James G. Fujimoto and Erich P. Ippen, Measurement of the amplitude and phase of ultrashort light pulses from spectrally resolved autocorrelation, Opt. Lett., 18 (1993) 1946.
Patrick O’Shea, Mark Kimmel, Xun Gu and Rick Trebino, Highly simplified device for ultrashort-pulse measurement, Opt. Lett., 26 (2001) 932.
Linden S., Giessen H. and Khul J., XFROG — a new method for amplitude and phase characterization of weak ultrashort pulses, Phys. Status Solidi B, 206 (1998) 119.
Duguay M. A. and Hansen J.-W., An ultrafast light gate, Appl. Phys. Lett., 15 (1969) 192.
Rick Trebino and Daniel J. Kane, Using phase retrieval to measure the intensity and phase of ultrashort pulses: frequency-resolved optical gating, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A, 10 (1993) 1101.
Kenneth W. DeLong, Rick Trebino and Daniel J. Kane, Comparison of ultrashort-pulse frequency-resolved-optical-gating traces for three common beam geometries, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 11 (1994) 1595.
John N. Sweetser, David N. Fittinghoff and Rick Trebino, Transient-grating frequency-resolved optical gating, Opt. Lett., 22 (1997) 519.
Froehly C. L., Lacourt A. and Vienot J. Ch., Time impulse response and time frequency response of optical pupils.: Experimental confirmations and applications, Nouv. Rev. Optique, 183 (1973) 183.
Chris Iaconis and Ian A. Walmsley, Spectral phase interferometry for direct electricfield reconstruction of ultrashort optical pulses, Opt. Lett., 23 (1998) 792.
Anderson M. E., Monmayrant A., Gorza Simon-Pierre, Wasylczyk P. and Ian A. Walmsley, SPIDER: A decade of measuring ultrashort pulses, Laser Phys. Lett., 5 (2008) 259.
Gallmann L., Sutter D. H., Matuschek N., Steinmeyer G. and Keller U., Techniques for the characterization of sub-10-fs optical pulses: A comparison, Appl. Phys. B: Lasers Optics, 70 (2000) 67.
Peter Baum and Eberhard Riedle, Design and calibration of zero-additional-phase SPIDER, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 22 (2005) 1875.
Ellen M. Kosik, Aleksander S. Radunsky, Ian A. Walmsley and Christophe Dorrer, Interferometric technique for measuring broadband ultrashort pulses at the sampling limit, Opt. Lett., 30 (2005) 326.
Adam S. Wyatt, Ian A. Walmsley, Gero Stibenz and Günter Steinmeyer, Sub-10fs pulse characterization using spatially encoded arrangement for spectral phase interferometry for direct electric field reconstruction, Opt. Lett., 31 (2006) 1914.
Jonathan R. Birge, Richard Ell and Franz X. Kartner, Two-dimensional spectral shearing interferometry for few-cycle pulse characterization and optimization, Spring. Ser. Chem. Phys., 88 (2007) 160.
Jonathan R. Birge, Helder M. Crespo and Franz X. Kartner, Theory and design of two-dimensional spectral shearing interferometry for few-cycle pulse measurement, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 27 (2010) 1165.
Vadim V. Lozovoy, Igor Pastirk and Marcos Dantus, Multiphoton intrapulse interference. IV. Ultrashort laser pulse spectral phase characterization and compensation, Opt. Lett., 29 (2004) 775.
Bingwei Xu, Jess M. Gunn, Johanna M. Dela Cruz, Vadim V. Lozovoy and Marcos Dantus, Quantitative investigation of the multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan method for simultaneous phase measurement and compensation of femtosecond laser pulses, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 23 (2006) 750.
Francisco Silva, Miguel Miranda, Benjamín Alonso, Jens Rauschenberger, Vladimir Pervak and Helder Crespo, Simultaneous compression, characterization and phase stabilization of GW-level 14 cycle VIS-NIR femtosecond pulses using a single dispersion-scan setup, Opt. Express, 22 (2014) 10181.
Miguel Miranda, Thomas Fordell, Cord Arnold, Anne L’Huillier and Helder Crespo, Simultaneous compression and characterization of ultrashort laser pulses using chirped mirrors and glass wedges, Opt. Express, 20 (2012) 688.
Miguel Miranda, Cord L. Arnold, Thomas Fordell, Francisco Silva, Benjamín Alonso, Rosa Weigand, Anne L’Huillier and Helder Crespo, Characterization of broadband few-cycle laser pulses with the d-scan technique, Opt. Express, 20 (2012) 18732.
Daniel E. Wilcox and Jennifer P. Ogilvie, Comparison of pulse compression methods using only a pulse shaper, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 31 (2014) 1544.
Nicolas Forget, Vincent Crozatier and Thomas Oksenhendler, Pulsemeasurement techniques using a single amplitude and phase spectral shaper, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 27 (2010) 742.
Vincent Loriot, Gregory Gitzinger and Nicolas Forget, Self-referenced characterization of femtosecond laser pulses by chirp scan, Opt. Express, 21 (2013) 24879.
Dirk Spangenberg, Pieter Neethling, Erich Rohwer, Michael H. Brügmann and Thomas Feurer, Time-domain ptychography, Phys. Rev. A, 91 (2015) 021803.
Spangenberg D., Rohwer E., Brugmann M. H. and Feurer T., Ptychographic ultrafast pulse reconstruction, Opt. Lett., 40 (2015) 1002.
Vardeny Z. and Tauc J., Picosecond coherence coupling in the pump and probe technique, Opt. Commun., 39 (1981) 396.
Kovalenko S. A., Dobryakov A. L., Ruthmann J. and Ernsting N. P., Femtosecond spectroscopy of condensed phases with chirped supercontinuum probing, Phys. Rev. A, 59 (1999) 2369.
Cristian Manzoni, Roberto Osellame, Marco Marangoni, Marcel Schultze, Uwe Morgner and Giulio Cerullo, High-repetition-rate two-color pump-probe system directly pumped by a femtosecond ytterbium oscillator, Opt. Lett., 34 (2009) 620.
Polli D., Brida D., Mukamel S., Lanzani G. and Cerullo G., Effective temporal resolution in pump-probe spectroscopy with strongly chirped pulses, Phys. Rev. A, 82 (2010) 053809.
Paye J., The chronocyclic representation of ultrashort light pulses, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., 28 (1992) 2262.
Hong K.-H., Kim J.-H., Kang Y.H. and Nam C.H., Time-frequency analysis of chirped femtosecond pulses using Wigner distribution function, Appl. Phys. B, 74 (2002) s231.
Xiche Hu, Ana Damjanovi´c, Thorsten Ritz and Klaus Schulten, Architecture and mechanism of the light-harvesting apparatus of purple bacteria, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 95 (1998) 5935.
Harry A. Frank and Richard J. Cogdell, Carotenoids in Photosynthesis, Photochem. Photobiol., 63 (1996) 257.
Eckhard Hofmann, Pamela M. Wrench, Frank P. Sharples, Roger G. Hiller, Wolfram Welte and Kay Diederichs, Structural basis of light harvesting by carotenoids: peridinin-chlorophyll-protein from Amphidinium carterae, Science, 272 (1996) 1788.
Hudson B. S. and Kohler B. E., A low-lying weak transition in the polyene α,ω-diphenyloctatetraene, Chem. Phys. Lett., 14 (1972) 299.
Schulten K. and Karplus M., On the origin of a low-lying forbidden transition in polyenes and related molecules, Chem. Phys. Lett., 14 (1972) 305.
Shreve A. P., Trautman J. K., Owens T. G. and Albrecht A. C., Determination of the S2 lifetime of β-carotene, Chem. Phys. Lett., 178 (1991) 89.
Hideki Kandori, Hiroyuki Sasabe and Mamoru Mimuro, Direct Determination of a Lifetime of the S2 State of β-Carotene by Femtosecond Time-Resolved Fluorescence Spectroscopy, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 116 (1994) 2671.
Alisdair N. Macpherson and Tomas Gillbro, Solvent Dependence of the Ultrafast S2− S1 Internal Conversion Rate of β-Carotene, J. Phys. Chem. A, 102 (1998) 5049.
Marilena Ricci, Stephen E. Bradforth, Ralph Jimenez and Graham R. Fleming, Internal conversion and energy transfer dynamics of spheroidene in solution and in the LH-1 and LH-2 light-harvesting complexes, Chem. Phys. Lett., 259 (1996) 381.
Brent P. Krueger, Gregory D. Scholes, Ralph Jimenez and Graham R. Fleming, Electronic Excitation Transfer from Carotenoid to Bacteriochlorophyll in the Purple Bacterium Rhodopseudomonas acidophila, J. Phys. Chem. B, 102 (1998) 2284.
Alisdair N. Macpherson, Juan B. Arellano, Niall J. Fraser, Richard J. Cogdell and Tomas Gillbro, Efficient Energy Transfer from the Carotenoid {S2} State in a Photosynthetic Light-Harvesting Complex, Biophys. J., 80 (2001) 923.
Richard J. Cogdell, Neil W. Isaacs, Tina D. Howard, Karen McLuskey, Niall J. Fraser and Stephen M. Prince, How photosynthetic bacteria harvest solar energy, J. Bacteriol., 181 (1999) 3869.
Giulio Cerullo, Cristian Manzoni, Larry Luer¨ and Dario Polli, Time-resolved methods in biophysics. 4. Broadband pump-probe spectroscopy system with sub-20fs temporal resolution for the study of energy transfer processes in photosynthesis, Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 6 (2007) 135.
Schoenlein R. W., Peteanu L. A., Mathies R. A. and Shank C. V., The first step in vision: femtosecond isomerization of rhodopsin, Science, 254 (1991) 412.
Birge R. R., Photophysics and Molecular Electronic Applications of the Rhodopsins, Ann. Rev. Phys. Chem., 41 (1990) 683.
Flavio Lumento, Vinicio Zanirato, Stefania Fusi, Elena Busi, Loredana Latterini, Fausto Elisei, Adalgisa Sinicropi, Tadeusz Andruniów, Nicolas Ferré and Riccardo Basosiet al., Quantum chemical modeling and preparation of a biomimetic photochemical switch, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 46 (2007) 414.
Adalgisa Sinicropi, Elena Martin, Mikhail Ryazantsev, Jan Helbing, Julien Briand, Divya Sharma, Jérémie Léonard, Stefan Haacke, Andrea Cannizzo, Majed Chergui, Vinicio Zanirato, Stefania Fusi, Fabrizio Santoro, Riccardo Basosi, Nicolas Ferré and Massimo Olivucci, An artificial molecular switch that mimics the visual pigment and completes its photocycle in picoseconds, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 105 (2008) 17642.
David J. Tannor, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (University Science Books) 2007.
Garavelli M., Celani P., Bernardi F., Robb M. A. and Olivucci M., The C5H6NH2+ Protonated Shiff Base: An ab Initio Minimal Model for Retinal Photoisomerization, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 119 (1997) 6891.
Remedios González-Luque, Marco Garavelli, Fernando Bernardi, Manuela Merchan, Michael A. Robb and Massimo Olivucci, Computational evidence in favor of a two-state, two-mode model of the retinal chromophore photoisomerization, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 97 (2000) 9379.
Martin Klessinger and Josef Michl, Excited States and Photochemistry of Organic Molecules (Wiley-VCH) 1995.
Benjamin G. Levine and Todd J. Martínez, Isomerization through conical intersections, Annu. Rev. Phys. Chem., 58 (2007) 613.
Dario Polli, Piero Altoè, Oliver Weingart, Katelyn M. Spillane, Cristian Manzoni, Daniele Brida, Gaia Tomasello, Giorgio Orlandi, Philipp Kukura and Richard A. Mathieset al., Conical intersection dynamics of the primary photoisomerization event in vision, Nature, 467 (2010) 440.
Brixner T., Tunable two-dimensional femtosecond spectroscopy, Opt. Lett., 29 (2004) 884.
Daniele Brida, Cristian Manzoni and Giulio Cerullo, Phase-locked pulses for two-dimensional spectroscopy by a birefringent delay line, Opt. Lett., 37 (2012) 3027.
Julien Réhault, Margherita Maiuri, Cristian Manzoni, Daniele Brida, Jan Helbing and Giulio Cerullo, 2D IR spectroscopy with phase-locked pulse pairs from a birefringent delay line, Opt. Express, 22 (2014) 9063.
Larry Lüer, Sai Kiran Rajendran, Tatjana Stoll, Lucia Ganzer, Julien Réhault, David M. Coles, David George Lidzey, Tersilla Virgili and Giulio Cerullo, Lévy Defects in Matrix-Immobilized J Aggregates: Tracing Intra-and Inter-Segmental Exciton Relaxation, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 8 (2017) 547.
Igor Stiopkin, Tobias Brixner, Mino Yang and Graham R. Fleming, Heterogeneous exciton dynamics revealed by two-dimensional optical spectroscopy, J. Phys. Chem. B, 110 (2006) 20032.
Mirjam van Burgel, Douwe A. Wiersma and Koos Duppen, The dynamics of one-dimensional excitons in liquids, J. Chem. Phys., 102 (1995) 20.
Efros Al. L. and Rosen M., The Electronic Structure of Semiconductor Nanocrystals, Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci., 30 (2000) 475.
Victor I. Klimov and Duncan W. McBranch, Femtosecond 1P-to-1S Electron Relaxation in Strongly Confined Semiconductor Nanocrystals, Phys. Rev. Lett., 80 (1998) 4028.
Klimov V. I., Mikhailovsky A. A., McBranch D. W., Leatherdale C. A. and Bawendi M. G., Quantization of Multiparticle Auger Rates in Semiconductor Quantum Dots, Science, 287 (2000) 1011.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
De Silvestri, S., Manzoni, C., Borrego-Varillas, R. et al. Tunable few-optical cycle pulses and advanced ultrafast spectroscopic techniques. Riv. Nuovo Cim. 41, 1–70 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1393/ncr/i2017-10143-7
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1393/ncr/i2017-10143-7