Femtosecond nonlinear spectroscopy at surfaces: Second-harmonic probing of hole burning at the Si(111)7x7 surface and fourier-transform sum-frequency vibrational spectroscopy
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
The high temporal resolution and broad bandwidth of a femtosecond laser system are exploited in a pair of nonlinear optical studies of surfaces. The dephasing dynamics of resonances associated with the adatom dangling bonds of the Si(111)7 x 7 surface are explored by transient second-harmonic hole burning, a process that can be described as a fourth-order nonlinear optical process. Spectral holes produced by a 100 fs pump pulse at about 800 nm are probed by the second harmonic signal of a 100 fs pulse tunable around 800 nm. The measured spectral holes yield homogeneous dephasing times of a few tens of femtoseconds. Fits with a Lorentzian spectral hole centered at zero probe detuning show a linear dependence of the hole width on pump fluence, which suggests that charge carrier-carrier scattering dominates the dephasing dynamics at the measured excitation densities. Extrapolation of the deduced homogeneous dephasing times to zero excitation density yields an intrinsic dephasing time of {approx} 70 fs. The presence of a secondary spectral hole indicates that scattering of the surface electrons with surface optical phonons at 570 cm-1 occurs within the first 200 fs after excitation. The broad bandwidth of femtosecond IR pulses is used to perform IR-visible sum frequency vibrational spectroscopy. By implementing a Fourier-transform technique, we demonstrate the ability to obtain sub-laser-bandwidth spectral resolution. FT-SFG yields a greater signal when implemented with a stretched visible pulse than with a femtosecond visible pulse. However, when compared with multichannel spectroscopy using a femtosecond IR pulse but a narrowband visible pulse, Fourier-transform SFG is found to have an inferior signal-to-noise ratio. A mathematical analysis of the signal-to-noise ratio illustrates the constraints on the Fourier-transform approach.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Science and Engineering Division
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 836810
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL-56751; R&D Project: 506001; TRN: US0500800
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: TH: Thesis (Ph.D.); Submitted to the University of California, Berkeley, CA (US); PBD: 24 Nov 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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