Study of the Effect of the Pulse Width of the Excitation Source on the Two-Photon Absorption and Two-Photon Circular Dichroism Spectra of Biaryl Derivatives.

Abstract

Herein we report on the expanded theoretical calculations and the experimental measurements of the two-photon absorption (TPA) and two-photon circular dichroism (TPCD) spectra of a series of optically active biaryl derivatives (R-BINOL, R-VANOL, and R-VAPOL) using femtosecond pulses. The comparative analysis of the experimental TPCD spectra obtained with our tunable amplified femtosecond system with those previously measured in our group on the same series of compounds in the picosecond regime reveals a decrease in the amplitude of the signal and an improvement in matching with the theory in the former. These results can be explained based on the negligible contribution of excited state absorption (ESA) using femtosecond pulses compared to the picosecond regime. We show how ESA affects both the strength of the signal and the shape of the TPA and TPCD spectra. TPA and TPCD spectra were obtained using the double L-scan technique over a broad spectral range (450-750 nm) using 90 fs pulses at 50 Hz repetition rate produced by an amplified femtosecond system. The theoretical calculations were performed using modern analytical response theory within the time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) approach using CAM-B3LYP and 6-311++G(d,p) basis sets.