Premium
Polarization control of ultrashort mid‐IR laser pulses for transient vibrational circular dichroism measurements
Author(s) -
Bonmarin Mathias,
Helbing Jan
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
chirality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.43
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1520-636X
pISSN - 0899-0042
DOI - 10.1002/chir.20819
Subject(s) - birefringence , femtosecond , vibrational circular dichroism , chemistry , optics , circular dichroism , laser , circular polarization , ultrashort pulse , polarization (electrochemistry) , linear dichroism , linear polarization , dichroism , molecular physics , physics , crystallography , microstrip
Abstract Linear dichroism and birefringence artifacts are a major source of concern in transient circular dichroism measurements. They mainly arise from interaction of an imperfectly circular polarized probe beam with a nonisotropic sample. We present in this article a procedure to generate mid‐IR pulses of highly symmetric left and right handed circular or elliptical polarization states for transient VCD measurements. An infrared femtosecond laser source is synchronized to the natural frequency of a photo elastic modulator. Residual static birefringence of the modulator and the sample cell can be largely compensated by carefully controlling the arrival time of the ultrashort probe pulses at the modulator. Chirality 21:E298–E306, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.