Quantum states depend on the coordinates of all their constituent particles, with essential multi-particle correlations. Time-resolved laser spectroscopy1 is widely used to probe the energies and dynamics of excited particles and quasiparticles such as electrons and holes2,3, excitons4-6, plasmons7, polaritons8 or phonons9. However, nonlinear signals from single- and multiple-particle excitations are all present simultaneously and cannot be disentangled without a priori knowledge of the system4,10. Here, we show that transient absorption-the most commonly used nonlinear spectroscopy-with N prescribed excitation intensities allows separation of the dynamics into N increasingly nonlinear contributions; in systems well-described by discrete excitations, these N contributions systematically report on zero to N excitations. We obtain clean single-particle dynamics even at high excitation intensities and can systematically increase the number of interacting particles, infer their interaction energies and reconstruct their dynamics, which are not measurable via conventional means. We extract single- and multiple-exciton dynamics in squaraine polymers11,12 and, contrary to common assumption6,13, we find that the excitons, on average, meet several times before annihilating. This surprising ability of excitons to survive encounters is important for efficient organic photovoltaics14,15. As we demonstrate on five diverse systems, our procedure is general, independent of the measured system or type of observed (quasi)particle and straightforward to implement. We envision future applicability in the probing of (quasi)particle interactions in such diverse areas as plasmonics7, Auger recombination2 and exciton correlations in quantum dots5,16,17, singlet fission18, exciton interactions in two-dimensional materials19 and in molecules20,21, carrier multiplication22, multiphonon scattering9 or polariton-polariton interaction8.

• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH

Monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides display a strong excitonic optical response. Additionally encapsulating the monolayer with hexagonal boron nitride allows to reach the limit of a purely homogeneously broadened exciton system. On such a MoSe2 -based system, ultrafast six-wave mixing spectroscopy is performed and a novel destructive photon echo effect is found. This process manifests as a characteristic depression of the nonlinear signal dynamics when scanning the delay between the applied laser pulses. By theoretically describing the process within a local field model, an excellent agreement with the experiment is reached. An effective Bloch vector representation is developed and thereby it is demonstrated that the destructive photon echo stems from a destructive interference of successive repetitions of the heterodyning experiment.

• Klíčová slova
• nonlinear spectroscopy, photon echo, transition metal dichalcogenides,
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH