Spectrometers and cameras are used in ultrafast spectroscopy to achieve high resolution in both time and frequency domains. Frequency-resolved signals from the camera pixels cannot be processed by common lock-in amplifiers, which have only a limited number of input channels. Here we demonstrate a rapid and economical method that achieves the function of a lock-in amplifier using mechanical choppers and a programmable microcontroller. We demonstrate the method's effectiveness by performing a frequency-resolved pump-probe measurement on the dye Nile Blue in solution.

Coherence oscillations measured in two-dimensional (2D) electronic spectra of pigment-protein complexes may have electronic, vibrational, or mixed-character vibronic origins, which depend on the degree of electronic-vibrational mixing. Oscillations from intrapigment vibrations can obscure the inter-site coherence lifetime of interest in elucidating the mechanisms of energy transfer in photosynthetic light-harvesting. Huang-Rhys factors (S) for low-frequency vibrations in Chlorophyll and Bacteriochlorophyll are quite small (S ≤ 0.05), so it is often assumed that these vibrations influence neither 2D spectra nor inter-site coherence dynamics. In this work, we explore the influence of S within this range on the oscillatory signatures in simulated 2D spectra of a pigment heterodimer. To visualize the inter-site coherence dynamics underlying the 2D spectra, we introduce a formalism which we call the "site-probe response." By comparing the calculated 2D spectra with the site-probe response, we show that an on-resonance vibration with Huang-Rhys factor as small as S = 0.005 and the most strongly coupled off-resonance vibrations (S = 0.05) give rise to long-lived, purely vibrational coherences at 77 K. We moreover calculate the correlation between optical pump interactions and subsequent entanglement between sites, as measured by the concurrence. At 77 K, greater long-lived inter-site coherence and entanglement appear with increasing S. This dependence all but vanishes at physiological temperature, as environmentally induced fluctuations destroy the vibronic mixing.

A hot phonon bottleneck may be responsible for slow hot carrier cooling in methylammonium lead iodide hybrid perovskite, creating the potential for more efficient hot carrier photovoltaics. In room-temperature 2D electronic spectra near the band edge, we observe amplitude oscillations due to a remarkably long lived 0.9 THz coherent phonon population at room temperature. This phonon (or set of phonons) is assigned to angular distortions of the Pb-I lattice, not coupled to cation rotations. The strong coupling between the electronic transition and the 0.9 THz mode(s), together with relative isolation from other phonon modes, makes it likely to cause a phonon bottleneck. The pump frequency resolution of the 2D spectra also enables independent observation of photoinduced absorptions and bleaches independently and confirms that features due to band gap renormalization are longer-lived than in transient absorption spectra.

2D electronic spectroscopy signals are simulated with accurate hierarchy method treatment of an electronic heterodimer coupled to a bath and local vibrations. We examine the effect of vibrations on the correspondence between exciton and population dynamics.

The optical properties of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), an important family of two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors for optoelectronic applications, are dominated by two excitons A (XA) and B (XB) located at K/K's valleys. The lineshape of the excitons is an indicator of the interaction of the excitons with other particles and also largely determines the performance of TMDC-based optoelectronic devices. In this work, we apply 2D electronic spectroscopy (2DES), which enables separation of the intrinsic homogeneous linewidth and the extrinsic inhomogeneous linewidth, to dissect the lineshape of XA in monolayer WS₂. With a home-built broadband optical parametric amplifier, the 2D spectra give the exciton linewidth values for extensive ranges of excitation densities and temperatures, reflecting inter-exciton and exciton-phonon interactions. Meanwhile, the time-domain evolution of the lineshape reveals a similar rate of spectral diffusion to that in quantum wells (QWs) based on III-V semiconductors.

Coherence beats are simulated in a numerically exact hierarchy method treatment of an electronic heterodimer coupled to a vibration and bath. We vary coupling parameters to analyze the lifetimes and contributions from different Liouville pathways. © 2014 OSA.

Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are promising two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors for application in optoelectronics. Their optical properties are dominated by two series of photo-excited exciton states—A (XA) and B (XB) 1,2 —that are derived from direct interband transitions near the band extrema. These exciton states have large binding energies and strong optical absorption 3–6 , and form an ideal system to investigate many-body effects in low dimensions. Because spin–orbit coupling causes a large splitting between bands of opposite spins, XA and XB are usually treated as spin-polarized Ising excitons, each arising from interactions within a specific set of states induced by interband transitions between pairs of either spin-up or spin-down bands (TA or TB). Here, by using monolayer MoS 2 as a prototypical system and solving the first-principles Bethe–Salpeter equations, we demonstrate a strong intravalley exchange interaction between TA and TB, indicating that XA and XB are mixed states instead of pure Ising excitons. Using 2D electronic spectroscopy, we observe that an optical excitation of the lower-energy TA induces a population of the higher-energy TB, manifesting the intravalley exchange interaction. This work elucidates the dynamics of exciton formation in monolayer TMDCs, and sheds light on many-body effects in 2D materials.