Ultrafast pulse-probe laser

The advent of ultrafast pump-probe laser techniques62 and their marriage with the TOF method also enables study of internal ion-molecule reactions in clus-ters.21,63-69 The apparatus used in our experiments is a reflectron TOF mass spectrometer coupled with a femtosecond laser system. An overview of the laser system is shown in Figure 4. Femtosecond laser pulses are generated by a colliding pulse mode-locked (CPM) ring dye laser. The cavity consists of a gain jet, a... 

The dynamics of fast processes such as electron and energy transfers and vibrational and electronic deexcitations can be probed by using short-pulsed lasers. The experimental developments that have made possible the direct probing of molecular dissociation steps and other ultrafast processes in real time (in the femtosecond time range) have, in a few cases, been extended to the study of surface phenomena. For instance, two-photon photoemission has been used to study the dynamics of electrons at interfaces [ ]. Vibrational relaxation times have also been measured for a number of modes such as the 0-Fl stretching m silica and the C-0 stretching in carbon monoxide adsorbed on transition metals [ ]. Pump-probe laser experiments such as these are difficult, but the field is still in its infancy, and much is expected in this direction m the near fiitiire. 

Since there are a large number of different experimental laser and detection systems that can be used for time-resolved resonance Raman experiments, we shall only focus our attention here on two common types of methods that are typically used to investigate chemical reactions. We shall first describe typical nanosecond TR spectroscopy instrumentation that can obtain spectra of intermediates from several nanoseconds to millisecond time scales by employing electronic control of the pnmp and probe laser systems to vary the time-delay between the pnmp and probe pnlses. We then describe typical ultrafast TR spectroscopy instrumentation that can be used to examine intermediates from the picosecond to several nanosecond time scales by controlling the optical path length difference between the pump and probe laser pulses. In some reaction systems, it is useful to utilize both types of laser systems to study the chemical reaction and intermediates of interest from the picosecond to the microsecond or millisecond time-scales. 

The characterization of the laser pulse widths can be done with commercial autocorrelators or by a variety of other methods that can be found in the ultrafast laser literature. " For example, we have found it convenient to find time zero delay between the pump and probe laser beams in picosecond TR experiments by using fluorescence depletion of trans-stilbene. In this method, the time zero was ascertained by varying the optical delay between the pump and probe beams to a position where the depletion of the stilbene fluorescence was halfway to the maximum fluorescence depletion by the probe laser. The accuracy of the time zero measurement was estimated to be +0.5ps for 1.5ps laser pulses. A typical cross correlation time between the pump and probe pulses can also be measured by the fluorescence depletion method. 

Ultrafast molecular elimination of iodine from IF2C-CF2I has been studied using the velocity map ion imaging technique in combination with femtosecond pump-probe laser excitation.51 By varying the femtosecond delay between pump and probe pulse, it has been found that elimination of molecular iodine is a concerted process, although the two carbon-iodine bonds are not broken synchronously. 

The pulse-probe technique can be extended to multiwavelength detection by using the ultrafast laser pulse to generate a white-light continuum probe, which can be dispersed with a spectrograph across a diode array or CCD detector after traversing the sample. Due to lower probe intensity, Cerenkov emission from the sample would be expected to be more of a complication in this case, but the correction methods developed for stroboscopic Cerenkov detection would also work here. 

This need for quantum mechanical techniques also arises in the connection between dynamics simulation and experiment when the detailed nature of light-matter interaction is important. An example is the initiation and probing of solution dynamics by ultrafast light pulses, in which the detailed time-frequency nature of the light interacts with the detailed time-frequency nature of the solution, and quantum aspects can become important. 1 At this level, the quantum dynamics of how the excitation and probe laser pulses interact with the sample must be considered in addition to all the other dynamics of the reaction process,... 

In this section the ultrafast structural redistribution of Aga, initiated by a 100fs laser pulse, is presented. The experiment makes use of a high-intensity cluster anion source, an ion trap, a mass-analyzing detector for cluster cations, and a laser system which produces pairs of ultrashort laser pulses with an adjustable time delay between the pump and the probe laser pulse (for details see Sect. 2.1.2). 

Optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) (Sect. 8.6) are very useful widely tunable secondary sources of ultrafast pulses that find a wide applicability in pump-probe experiments. Two independent OPOs, which are pumped by the same laser for automatic synchronization and minimal temporal jitter, are... 

Schematic diagrams of modem experimental apparatus used for IR pump-probe by Payer and co-workers [50] and for IR-Raman experiments by Dlott and co-workers [39] are shown in figure C3.5.3. Ultrafast mid-IR pulse generation by optical parametric amplification (OPA) [71] will not discussed here. Single-colour IR pump-probe or vibrational echo experiments have been perfonned with OP As or free-electron lasers. Free-electron lasers use...

Several laser systems have been used in our time-resolved PM measurements. For the ultrafast measurements, a colliding pulse mode-locked (CPM) dye laser was employed [11]. Its characteristic pulsewidth is about 70 fs, however, its wavelength is fixed at 625 nin (or 2.0 cV). For ps measurements at various wavelengths two synchronously pumped dye lasers were used (12], Although their time resolution was not belter than 5 ps, they allowed us to probe in the probe photon energy range from 1.25 cV to 2.2 cV. In addition, a color center laser... 

To determine molecular motions in real time necessitates the application of a time-ordered sequence of (at least) two ultrafast laser pulses to a molecular sample the first pulse provides the starting trigger to initiate a particular process, the break-up of a molecule, for example whilst the second pulse, time-delayed with respect to the first, probes the molecular evolution as a function of time. For isolated molecules in the gas phase, this approach was pioneered by the 1999 Nobel Laureate, A. H. Zewail of the California Institute of Technology. The nature of what is involved is most readily appreciated through an application, illustrated here for the photofragmentation of iodine bromide (IBr). 

Figure 1.3. Real-time femtosecond spectroscopy of molecules can be described in terms of optical transitions excited by ultrafast laser pulses between potential energy curves which indicate how different energy states of a molecule vary with interatomic distances. The example shown here is for the dissociation of iodine bromide (IBr). An initial pump laser excites a vertical transition from the potential curve of the lowest (ground) electronic state Vg to an excited state Vj. The fragmentation of IBr to form I + Br is described by quantum theory in terms of a wavepacket which either oscillates between the extremes of or crosses over onto the steeply repulsive potential V[ leading to dissociation, as indicated by the two arrows. These motions are monitored in the time domain by simultaneous absorption of two probe-pulse photons which, in this case, ionise the dissociating molecule.

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