Coherent Transients and Pulse Fourier Transform Spectroscopy

4 Coherent Transients and Pulse Fourier Transform Spectroscopy 

In this section we discuss some methods of time-resolved laser spectroscopy which are based on the time evolution of coherently excited states. Such techniques have been successfully used for about 25 years in radio frequency spectroscopy and are well known under the slogans spin-echo and time-resolved nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). 

For the last 10 years these methods have been extended into the optical region, taking advantage of sufficiently intense coherent radiation sources provided by pulsed lasers. Time-resolved coherent optical spectroscopy has rapidly developed into an important branch of high-resolution laser spectroscopy [11.32a,b]. 

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