Ultrafast optical gating techniques based on transient optical Kerr effect

Several ultrafast optical gating techniques based on transient optical Kerr effect are introduced, including traditional optical Kerr birefringence gating technique, transient grating optical gating technique, and transient optical Kerr lens gating techniques. All the techniques are based on pump-probe experimental setup. Utilizing the change of the phase (polarization), propagation direction or the beam divergence of the signal beam induced by the transient modulation of Kerr materials refractive index, the ultrafast time-resolved spectra of the signal beam could be obtained by scanning the pump-probe delay. By comparing their working principles and experimental setups, it is demonstrated that the transient beam deflection optical gating technique has extended measurable probe bandwidth with no requirements of pump-probe polarization configuration and phase matching conditions, thus it can be widely used in ultrafast broadband time-resolved spectroscopy.