Photon counting based pump-probe technique for quantitative characterization of fluorescence in a lock-in free detection manner

Abstract

The stimulated emission (SE) signal in pump-probe experiment is conventionally measured with lock-in detection to differentiate the weak signals from the relatively large background of spontaneous emission and probe beam. Therefore, direct characterization of signal strength are often major limiting factors in terms of noise, speed, and data acquisition. In contrast, photon counting allows direct quantification of signal strength, while synchronized pump-probe pulse enables precise timing and the separation of signals accordingly. Herein, the SE based pump-probe method is combined with time-correlated single-photon counting to investigate the ultrafast photochemical parameters, digitally and quantitatively. As a proof-of-concept, our technique is applied to investigate, fluorescence lifetime ( τ ) ∼ 3.71 ns , optical absorption cross-section ( σ abs ) ∼ 1.23 × 10 − 16 c m 2 , and the SE cross-section ( σ SE ) ∼ 2.22 × 10 − 17 c m 2 , of a fluorescent dye (ATTO 647N) quantitatively. The experimental results are also compared with theoretical photon statistics to further justify the advantages including experimental and statistical critical molecular dynamics parameters extraction with excellent high accuracy.