Coherent photon interference elimination and spectral correction in femtosecond time-resolved fluorescence non-collinear optical parametric amplification spectroscopy

Abstract

We report an improved setup of femtosecond time-resolved fluorescence non-collinear optical parametric amplification spectroscopy (FNOPAS) with a 210 fs temporal response. The system employs a Cassegrain objective to collect and focus fluorescence photons, which eliminates the interference from the coherent photons in the fluorescence amplification by temporal separation of the coherent photons and the fluorescence photons. The gain factor of the Cassegrain objective-assisted FNOPAS is characterized as 1.24 × 10(5) for Rhodamine 6G. Spectral corrections have been performed on the transient fluorescence spectra of Rhodamine 6G and Rhodamine 640 in ethanol by using an intrinsic calibration curve derived from the spectrum of superfluorescence, which is generated from the amplification of the vacuum quantum noise. The validity of spectral correction is illustrated by comparisons of spectral shape and peak wavelength between the corrected transient fluorescence spectra of these two dyes acquired by FNOPAS and their corresponding standard reference spectra collected by the commercial streak camera. The transient fluorescence spectra of the Rhodamine 6G were acquired in an optimized phase match condition, which gives a deviation in the peak wavelength between the retrieved spectrum and the reference spectrum of 1.0 nm, while those of Rhodamine 640 were collected in a non-optimized phase match condition, leading to a deviation in a range of 1.0-3.0 nm. Our results indicate that the improved FNOPAS can be a reliable tool in the measurement of transient fluorescence spectrum for its high temporal resolution and faithfully corrected spectrum.