Optimizing the sensitivity of high repetition rate broadband transient optical spectroscopy with modified shot-to-shot detection

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-repetition-rate broadband transient optical spectrometer with a modified detection scheme that significantly reduces noise, enabling sensitive measurements of low-fluence dynamics in materials like monolayer graphene.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel modulation and data processing approach for shot-to-shot detection, achieving lower noise levels than commercial systems and enabling low-fluence measurements.

Findings

Achieved a noise level of 10^{-5} OD in 4 seconds.

Demonstrated measurement of signals as low as 10^{-6} OD in monolayer graphene.

Enabled new low-fluence data acquisition regime for low-dimensional materials.

Abstract

A major limitation of transient optical spectroscopy is that relatively high laser fluences are required to enable broadband, multichannel detection with acceptable signal-to-noise levels. Under typical experimental conditions, many condensed phase and nanoscale materials exhibit fluence-dependent dynamics, including higher-order effects such as carrier-carrier annihilation. With the proliferation of commercial laser systems, offering both high repetition rates and high pulse energies, has come new opportunities for high sensitivity pump-probe measurements at low pump fluences. However, experimental considerations needed to fully leverage the statistical advantage of these laser systems has not been fully described. Here we demonstrate a high repetition rate, broadband transient spectrometer capable of multichannel shot-to-shot detection at 90 kHz. Importantly, we find that several high-speed cameras exhibit a time-domain fixed pattern noise resulting from interleaved analog-to-digital converters that is particularly detrimental to the conventional "ON/OFF" modulation scheme used in pump-probe spectroscopy. Using a modified modulation and data processing scheme, we achieve a noise level of $10^{-5}$ OD for an integration time of four seconds, an order of magnitude lower than for commercial 1 kHz transient spectrometers. We leverage the high sensitivity of this system to measure the differential transmission of monolayer graphene at low pump fluence. We show that signals on the order of $10^{-6}$ OD can be measured, enabling a new data acquisition regime for low-dimensional materials.