Abstract

Time resolved pump and probe measurements with probing pulses in the mid-IR spectral region has proven to yield important information on fast reactional and relaxational processes in solid state physics, semiconductor physics, chemical physics, and biophysics. In order to make new experiments in those physical fields possible, one requires tunable sub-picosecond mid-IR-pulses and a experimental setup, which allows the sensetive detection of absorption changes as small as 0.1 mOD. Our laser system is based on a femtosecond Ti-sapphire laser and regenerative amplifier which is the master light source used for a subsequent difference frequency mixing to obtain sub-picosecond pulses in the mid IR-region. The amplifier operates at a repetition rate of 1 kHz, a wavelength of 815 nm, a pulse duration of 120 fs, and a pulse energy of 500 μJ [1].

© 1994 Optical Society of America