Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 13: Molekülphysik Poster 1

MO 13.17: Poster

Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 16:30–19:00, VMP 8 Foyer

Dynamics of elementary excitations in para-hydrogen crystals: long living, coherent phonons, rotons and stimulated rotational Raman beats — •Falk Königsmann, Nina Owschimikow, and Nikolaus Schwentner — Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Experimentalphysik, Arnimallee 14, D-14195 Berlin

One of the most distinct spectroscopic features of cryogenic para-hydrogen are the sharp linewidths. The thus expected very long coherence times in the dynamics did however not show up in previous ultrashort pulsed excitations. Our approach is ultrashort, spectrally resolved Optical Kerr Effect (OKE) spectroscopy, sensitive to induced anisotropies. We grow 3 cm long, transparent para-hydrogen crystals in an enclosed cell at 10 K, which are then cooled down to 4 K. The crystals are pumped with 150 fs pulses at 780 nm of a Ti:Sa amplified laser system and the induced birefringence is detected with the second harmonic in a colinear way. We observe a long lasting (>20 ps) sinusodial birefringence modulation with a period of 907 fs. It coincides with the transverse, optical phonon at the center of the Brillouin-zone, which is observed exclusively in Raman scattering. We also observed long lasting (>80 ps), higher frequency birefringence modulations with a period of 94 fs and pump-induced, stimulated Stokes- and Anti-Stokes Raman bands of the detected second harmonic. Both match the J=2 roton excitation of 355 wavenumbers. The latter carries a 17 ps beating structure, which corresponds to the 2.0 wavenumbers splitting in the roton triplet also known from cw Raman-spectroscopy.