Abstract

Chemical reaction and optical dynamics in the liquid phase are strongly affected by specific solute-solvent interactions. The dynamical part of this coupling leads to energy fluctuations. It turns out that nonlinear optical spectroscopic techniques provide the key to map out the dynamics of the solute-solvent coupling underlying the optical lineshape. In case of solutions, pump-probe, transient hole burning, resonance Raman scattering and photon echo have been extensively used. In this contribution, we discuss the concept of photon echo in greater detail.

© 1998 IEEE