Two-Dimensional Electronic Spectroscopy of Rhodamine 700 using an 8-fs Ultrabroadband Laser Source and Full Wavelength Reference Detection

Two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES) is one of the premier tools for investigating photoinduced condensed phase dynamics, combining high temporal and spectral resolution to probe ultrafast phenomena. We have coupled an ultrabroadband laser source generated with a hollow-core fibre, compressing pulses to have a pulse duration of 8 fs, with a boxcars 2DES interferometer constructed from only conventional optics. The resulting ultra-broad bandwidth and high temporal resolution allow for superior spectral coverage of the typically broad molecular line shapes in the near-IR/visible region in room temperature solutions and the exploration of the excited state dynamics at the earliest time epoch in complex systems. The new spectrometer is characterised by examining the dynamics of dye molecule Rhodamine 700 in methanol solution. These data exhibit rich vibrational wavepacket dynamics, with 2DES data unravelling key molecular vibronic couplings between multiple vibrational modes. For the first time in a degenerate broadband 2DES experiment, we demonstrate the implementation of full-wavelength reference detection to correct for wavelength-dependent laser intensity fluctuations. The net result is a 4–5x increased signal-to-noise (S:N) ratio compared to data acquired without reference detection, yielding a typical S:N ratio = 28. The increased S:N ratio facilitates more rapid data acquisition and examination of samples at lower optical densities, and thus concentrations, than typically used in 2DES experiments. These advances will help to alleviate the typical high demands on precious samples in 2DES measurements.