Tuneable ultrafast laser system

Ultrafast laser system

Amplified Ti:sapphire laser system producing 40-fs pulse train at 1 kHz repetition rate (KMLabs Dragon)
Two collinear optical parametric amplifiers, one tuneable between 230 and 2500 nm and the other between 460 and 2500 nm (Light Conversion TOPAS)
Home-built non-collinear optical parametric amplifier producing <10-fs pulse train centred at 600 nm, based on the design of Manzoni et al.. We compress the chirped output of the NOPA using Multiphoton Intrapulse Interference Phase Scan (femtoJock-P, Biophotonics Solutions).

Experimental capabilities

All of the following optical probes are exploited with temperature control of the sample between 4.2 K and room temperature.

Time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy
- Photoluminescence up-conversion in a BBO crystal with a 1305-nm femtosecond optical gate
- Streak camera with 3-ps resolution (Axis-Photonique)
- Gated, intensified CCD camera (Princeton Instruments PIMAX 2)
Femtosecond transient absorption
- Single-channel probe in the wavelength range 460-2500 nm with the output of one TOPAS
- Multi-channel probe with NMOS self-scanning diode arrays, probing with white-light continumm in the range 500-1000 nm
Ultrafast photocurrent cross-correlation spectroscopy
Two-dimensional photon-echo electronic spectroscopy, based on the experimental design of Prokhorenko et al., using the output of our home-built NOPA