Application of two-photon chromophore excitation to laser scanning microscopy

Abstract

The non-linear optical technique of two-photon excitation of fluorescence and photochemical reactions makes possible new applications that are not possible using linear one-photon excitation in laser scanning confocal microscopy. The two-photon excitation effect arises from the simultaneous absorption of two red photons, which causes the transition to an excited electronic state with its normal absorption in the ultraviolet. In our fluorescence experiments, this excited state is the same singlet state, S1, that is populated during a conventional fluorescence experiment, and thus exhibits the same emission properties (e.g. wavelength shifts, environmental sensitivity) that are observed in typical biological microscopy studies. Likewise, photochemical reactions such as light induced polymerization and photolytic uncaging that are normally catalyzed by UV light can be generated using two-photon excitation. In practice, twophoton excitation is made possible by the very high local instantaneous intensity that is provided by a combination of the diffraction limited focusing in the microscope and the temporal concentration of a subpicosecond mode-locked laser.