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Room-temperature ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy of a single molecule

Nature Photonics volume 12, pages 45–49 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Single-molecule spectroscopy aims to unveil often hidden but potentially very important contributions of single entities to a system’s ensemble response. Albeit contributing tremendously to our ever growing understanding of molecular processes, the fundamental question of temporal evolution, or change, has thus far been inaccessible, thus painting a static picture of a dynamic world. Here, we finally resolve this dilemma by performing ultrafast time-resolved transient spectroscopy on a single molecule. By tracing the femtosecond evolution of excited electronic state spectra of single molecules over hundreds of nanometres of bandwidth at room temperature, we reveal their nonlinear ultrafast response in an effective three-pulse scheme with fluorescence detection. A first excitation pulse is followed by a phase-locked de-excitation pulse pair, providing spectral encoding with 25 fs temporal resolution. This experimental realization of true single-molecule transient spectroscopy demonstrates that two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy of single molecules is experimentally within reach.

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Fig. 1: Concept of transient absorption spectroscopy and single-molecule implementation.
Fig. 2: Experimental implementation of spectral modulation spectroscopy and proof-of-concept experiments on single molecules.
Fig. 3: Single-molecule transient fluorescence spectroscopy and transient stimulated emission spectra.
Fig. 4: Ultrafast broadband single-molecule transient absorption spectroscopy.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the European Commission (European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant 670949-LightNet), the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO) Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2015-0522, FIS2015-69258-P, FIS2015-72409-EXP), the Catalan Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR; 2014SGR01540), Fundació Privada Cellex and Generalitat de Catalunya through the CERCA programme. M.L. acknowledges financial support from the Marie-Curie International Fellowship, and co-funding of regional, national and international programmes (COFUND). C.T. thanks the COST Action Nanoscale Quantum Optics (MP1403) and acknowledges financial support from MIUR programme Q-Sec and Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze (GRANCASSA). We thank A. Weigel and C. Schnedermann for helpful discussions while preparing the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICFO - Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain

    Matz Liebel & Niek F. van Hulst

  2. CNR-INO, Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy

    Costanza Toninelli

  3. LENS, Università di Firenze, 50019, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy

    Costanza Toninelli

  4. ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avanats, Pg. Lluís Companys 23, Barcelona, Spain

    Niek F. van Hulst

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  1. Matz Liebel
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  2. Costanza Toninelli
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Contributions

M.L. proposed the project. M.L. experimentally realized the project and analysed all experimental data. C.T. supplied the DBT samples. N.F.v.H. and M.L. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the experimental results and the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Matz Liebel or Niek F. van Hulst.

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Liebel, M., Toninelli, C. & van Hulst, N.F. Room-temperature ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy of a single molecule. Nature Photon 12, 45–49 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-017-0056-5

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