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Ultrafast laser spectroscopy

spectroscopy with lasers with very short pulses

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ186105 ↗
Source-derived summary

Ultrafast laser spectroscopy is a category of spectroscopic techniques using ultrashort pulse lasers for the study of dynamics on extremely short time scales (attoseconds to nanoseconds). Different methods are used to examine the dynamics of charge carriers, atoms, and molecules. Many different procedures have been developed spanning different time scales and photon energy ranges; some common methods are listed below.

Attosecond-to-picosecond spectroscopy

Dynamics on the femtosecond time scale are in general too fast to be measured electronically. Most measurements are done by employing a sequence of ultrashort light pulses to initiate a process and record its dynamics. The temporal width (duration) of the light pulses has to be on the same scale as the dynamics that are to be measured or even shorter.

Light sources

Titanium-sapphire laser

Ti-sapphire lasers are tunable lasers that emit red and near-infrared light (700 nm- 1100 nm).Ti-sapphire laser oscillators use Ti doped-sapphire crystals as a gain medium and Kerr-lens mode-locking to achieve sub-picosecond light pulses. Typical Ti:sapphire oscillator pulses have nJ energy and repetition rates 70-100 MHz. Chirped pulse amplification through regenerative amplification can be used to attain higher pulse energies. For amplification, laser pulses from the Ti:sapphire oscillator must first be stretched in time to prevent damage to optics, and then are injected into the cavity of another laser where pulses are amplified at a lower repetition rate.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ultrafast laser spectroscopy” is spectroscopy with lasers with very short pulses. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ultrafast, laser and spectroscopy, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1100—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Ultrafast, laser and spectroscopy is the immediate research focus.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q186105. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1100.

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This entry incorporates text from “Ultrafast laser spectroscopy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.