Observation of stimulated emission by direct three-photon excitation

Guang S. He, Przemyslaw P. Markowicz, Tzu-Chau Lin and Paras N. Prasad ()
Additional contact information
Guang S. He: Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Przemyslaw P. Markowicz: Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Tzu-Chau Lin: Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Paras N. Prasad: Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Nature, 2002, vol. 415, issue 6873, 767-770

Abstract: Abstract Multiphoton processes, predicted1 theoretically in 1931, were for a long time considered to be mainly of academic interest. This view changed when it was shown2,3 that a two-photon absorption process could, because of a quadratic dependence of excitation on intensity, produce a spatially confined excitation useful for three-dimensional data storage and imaging. Two-photon absorption has received considerable attention recently because of the development of highly efficient two-photon-sensitive materials, leading to numerous technological applications4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28. These successes have created interest in exploring applications based on three-photon excitations29. For a three-photon process, a longer excitation wavelength such as those common in optical communications can be used. Also, the cubic dependence of the three-photon process on the input light intensity provides a stronger spatial confinement, so that a higher contrast in imaging can be obtained. Here we report the observation of a highly directional and up-converted stimulated emission as an amplified spontaneous emission, produced in an organic chromophore solution by a strong simultaneous three-photon absorption at 1.3 µm. This achievement suggests opportunities for a three-photon process in frequency-upconversion lasing, short-pulse optical communications, and the emerging field of biophotonics.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/415767a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:415:y:2002:i:6873:d:10.1038_415767a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/415767a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().