Nonlinear chirped Doppler interferometry for \c{hi}(3) spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper introduces nonlinear chirped Doppler interferometry, a novel ultrafast spectroscopic technique for characterizing third-order nonlinearities with high sensitivity and immunity to environmental fluctuations.

Contribution

The paper presents a new interferometric method that enhances detection of nonlinear phase shifts on femtosecond timescales without active stabilization.

Findings

Detects nonlinear phase shifts as low as 10 mrad.

Characterizes nonlinear coefficients of various materials.

Successfully measures soft vibration mode of KTA.

Abstract

Four-wave mixing processes are ubiquitous in ultrafast optics and the determination of the coefficients of the $\chi^{(3)}$ tensor is thus essential. We introduce a novel time-resolved ultrafast spectroscopic method to characterize the third-order nonlinearity on the femtosecond time-scale. This approach, coined as "nonlinear chirped Doppler interferometry", makes use of the variation of the optical group delay of a transmitted probe under the effect of an intense pump pulse in the nonlinear medium of interest. The observable is the spectral interference between the probe and a reference pulse sampled upstream. We show that the detected signal is enhanced when the pulses are chirped, and that, although interferometric, the method is immune to environmental phase fluctuations and drifts. By chirping adequately the reference pulse, the transient frequency shift of the probe pulses is also detected in the time domain and the detected nonlinear signal is enhanced. Nonlinear phase shifts as low as 10\,mrad, corresponding to a frequency shift of 30\,GHz, i.e. 0.01\% of the carrier frequency, are detected without heterodyne detection or active phase-stabilization. The diagonal and/or non-diagonal terms of reference glasses (SiO$_2$) and crystals (Al$_2$O$_3$, BaF$_2$, CaF$_2$) are characterized. The method is finally applied to measure the soft vibration mode of KTiOAsO$_4$ (KTA).