The nature of relaxation processes revealed by the action signals of phase modulated light fields

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental method using phase-modulated light to analyze relaxation processes in photoactive materials by examining action signals at specific modulation frequencies.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized approach to identify relaxation dynamics through the ratio of action signal amplitudes at different harmonics, validated with experiments on rhodamine 6G and GaP photodiodes.

Findings

The amplitude ratio of secondary to primary signals indicates the type of relaxation process.

The method can determine recombination rates in photodiodes.

The ratio varies with intensity and relaxation dynamics, providing a diagnostic tool.

Abstract

We introduce a generalized theoretical approach to study action signals induced by the absorption of two-photons from two phase modulated laser beams and subject it to experimental testing for two types of photoactive samples, solution of rhodamine 6G and GaP photodiode. In our experiment, the phases of the laser beams are modulated at the frequencies f1 and f2, respectively. The action signals, such as photoluminescence and photocurrent, which result from the absorption of two photons, are isolated at frequencies m f (f=|f1-f2|, m=0,1,2...). We demonstrate that the ratio of the amplitudes of the secondary (m=2) and the primary (m=1) signals is sensitive to the type of relaxation process taken place in the system and thus can be used for its identification. Such sensitivity originates from cumulative effects of non-equilibrated state of the system between the light pulses. When the cumulative effects are small, i.e. the relaxation time is much shorter then the laser repetition rate or the laser intensity is high enough to dominate the system behavior, the ratio achieves its reference value 1:4 (the signature of two-photon absorption). In the intermediate regimes the ratio changes rapidly with the growth of intensity from zero value in case of second order relaxation process, while it demonstrates slow monotonic decrease for linear relaxation. In the article we also determine the value of the recombination rate in a GaP photodiode by using the above approach.