TY - JOUR A1 - Steinbacher, Andreas A1 - Buback, Johannes A1 - Nürnberger, Patrick A1 - Brixner, Tobias T1 - Precise and rapid detection of optical activity for accumulative femtosecond spectroscopy JF - Optics Express N2 - We present polarimetry, i.e. the detection of optical rotation of light polarization, in a configuration suitable for femtosecond spectroscopy. The polarimeter is based on common-path optical heterodyne interferometry and provides fast and highly sensitive detection of rotatory power. Femtosecond pump and polarimeter probe beams are integrated into a recently developed accumulative technique that further enhances sensitivity with respect to single-pulse methods. The high speed of the polarimeter affords optical rotation detection during the pump-pulse illumination period of a few seconds. We illustrate the concept on the photodissociation of the enantiomers of methyl p-tolyl sulfoxide. The sensitivity of rotatory detection, i.e. the minimum rotation angle that can be measured, is determined experimentally including all noise sources to be 0.10 milli-degrees for a measurement time of only one second and an interaction length of 250 μm. The suitability of the presented setup for femtosecond studies is demonstrated in a non-resonant two-photon photodissociation experiment. Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-85913 UR - http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-20-11-11838&id=233249 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Verma, Pramod Kumar A1 - Steinbacher, Andreas A1 - Schmiedel, Alexander A1 - Nuernberger, Patrick A1 - Brixner, Tobias T1 - Excited-state intramolecular proton transfer of 2-acetylindan-1,3-dione studied by ultrafast absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy JF - Structural Dynamics N2 - We employ transient absorption from the deep-UV to the visible region and fluorescence upconversion to investigate the photoinduced excited-state intramolecular proton-transfer dynamics in a biologically relevant drug molecule, 2-acetylindan-1,3-dione. The molecule is a ß-diketone which in the electronic ground state exists as exocyclic enol with an intramolecular H-bond. Upon electronic excitation at 300 nm, the first excited state of the exocyclic enol is initially populated, followed by ultrafast proton transfer (≈160 fs) to form the vibrationally hot endocyclic enol. Subsequently, solvent-induced vibrational relaxation takes place (≈10 ps) followed by decay (≈390 ps) to the corresponding ground state. KW - time resolved spectroscopy KW - ground states KW - fluorescence spectra KW - absorption spectra KW - ultraviolet light KW - hydrogen bonding KW - excited states KW - reaction mechanisms KW - fluorescence KW - solvents Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-181301 VL - 3 ER -