Probing with randomly interleaved pulse train bridges the gap between ultrafast pump-probe and nanosecond flash photolysis

Despite the long-standing importance of transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy, many researchers remain frustrated by the difficulty of measuring the nanosecond range in a wide spectral range. To address this shortcoming, we propose a TA spectrophotometer in which there is no synchronization between a pump pulse and a train of multiple probe pulses from a picosecond supercontinuum light source, termed the randomly-interleaved-pulse-train (RIPT) method. For each pump pulse, many monochromatized probe pulses impinge upon the sample, and the associated pump-probe time delays are determined passively shot by shot with subnanosecond accuracy. By repeatedly pumping with automatically varying time delays, a TA temporal profile that covers a wide dynamic range from subnanosecond to milliseconds is simultaneously obtained. By scanning wavelength, this single, simple apparatus acquires not only wide time range TA profiles, but also broadband TA spectra from the visible through the near-infrared regions. Furthermore, we present a typical result to demonstrate how the RIPT method may be used to correct for fluorescence, which often pollutes TA curves. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America