We developed pulse-shaper-assisted coherent two-dimensional (2D) electronic spectroscopy in liquids using fluorescence detection. A customized pulse shaper facilitates shot-to-shot modulation at 1 kHz and is employed for rapid scanning over all time delays. A full 2D spectrum with 15 × 15 pixels is obtained in approximately 6 s of measurement time (plus further averaging if needed). Coherent information is extracted from the incoherent fluorescence signal via 27-step phase cycling. We exemplify the technique on cresyl violet in ethanol and recover literature-known oscillations as a function of population time. Signal-to-noise behavior is analyzed as a function of the amount of averaging. Rapid scanning provides a 2D spectrum with a root-mean-square error of < 0.05 after 1 min of measurement time.

Coherent two-dimensional (2D) optical spectroscopy has revolutionized our ability to probe many types of couplings and ultrafast dynamics in complex quantum systems. The dynamics and function of any quantum system strongly depend on couplings to the environment. Thus, studying coherent interactions for different environments remains a topic of tremendous interest. Here we introduce coherent 2D electronic mass spectrometry that allows 2D measurements on effusive molecular beams and thus on quantum systems with minimum system–bath interaction and employ this to identify the major ionization pathway of 3d Rydberg states in NO2. Furthermore, we present 2D spectra of multiphoton ionization, disclosing distinct differences in the nonlinear response functions leading to the ionization products. We also realize the equivalent of spectrally resolved transient-absorption measurements without the necessity for acquiring weak absorption changes. Using time-of-flight detection introduces cations as an observable, enabling the 2D spectroscopic study on isolated systems of photophysical and photochemical reactions.

We investigate the gas-phase photochemistry of 5-diazo Meldrum's acid (DMA), a photoactive compound used in lithography, by femtosecond photofragment ion spectroscopy. Transient-absorption studies in solution had revealed an ultrafast intramolecular Wolff rearrangement to a ketene after UV excitation, followed by reactions which also involve the solvent. Due to the absence of solvent molecules in this gas-phase study, we are able to focus purely on the photochemistry of the Wolff rearrangement and subsequent reaction steps. The observation of the time-resolved photofragment ion signals allows us to discriminate the dynamics of ketene and carbene products. By identification of the different possible molecular origins for a certain fragment ion signal, the time scale of the Wolff rearrangement and the lifetime of the ketene product are inferred. We further identified experimental signatures of a second Wolff rearrangement emanating from the carbene product, as had been conjectured indirectly for this molecule from pyrolysis studies.

We present a new data acquisition concept using optimized non-uniform sampling and compressed sensing reconstruction in order to substantially decrease the acquisition times in action-based multidimensional electronic spectroscopy. For this we acquire a regularly sampled reference data set at a fixed population time and use a genetic algorithm to optimize a reduced non-uniform sampling pattern. We then apply the optimal sampling for data acquisition at all other population times. Furthermore, we show how to transform two-dimensional (2D) spectra into a joint 4D time-frequency von Neumann representation. This leads to increased sparsity compared to the Fourier domain and to improved reconstruction. We demonstrate this approach by recovering transient dynamics in the 2D spectrum of a cresyl violet sample using just 25% of the originally sampled data points.

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