Weakly chirped pulses in frequency resolved coherent spectroscopy

The role of weakly chirped pulses (time bandwidth product, Delta v Delta tau<0.61) on three-pulse photon echo signals has been systematically studied. Pulses with varying chirp were characterized with frequency resolved optical gating (FROG) and used to measure spectrally resolved three-pulse photon echoes of a dye in solution. The weakly chirped pulses give rise to markedly different echo signals for population times below similar to 100 fs. The chirped pulses can decrease or enhance spectral signatures of an excited state absorption transition in the echo signal. Furthermore, the observed dephasing dynamics depend on the phase of the electric fields. Simulations based on a three-level model and the electric fields retrieved from the FROG traces give a good agreement for photon echo experiments with both transform limited and chirped pulses. The simulations also allow for a numerical investigation of effects of chirp in two-dimensional spectroscopy. For a two-level system, the chirped pulses result in nonelliptical two-dimensional spectra that can erroneously be interpreted as spectral heterogeneity with frequency dependent dephasing dynamics. Furthermore, chirped pulses can give rise to false cross peaks when strong vibrational modes are involved in the system-bath interaction. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3404402]