Abstract

Over the past few years, dramatic advances in short pulse technology have pushed studies of dynamical processes to ever shorter time scales. Unfortunately, short pulse technology remains beyond the means of many investigators. A simple and clever alternative approach to achieving high temporal resolution was recently proposed by several groups¹⁻⁴. In this approach, time resolution is limited only by the coherence time of the excitation light, rather than by its duration. Since laser light of short coherence time (i.e. large bandwidth) is much more easily generated than the corresponding short pulse, this result is of great importance.

© 1986 Optical Society of America