Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 19, 2025

Measurement of Coherence Decay in GaMnAs Using Femtosecond Four-wave Mixing
Published on: December 3, 2013
Attosecond Time-Domain Measurement of Core-Level-Exciton Decay in Magnesium Oxide
Romain Géneaux1, Christopher J Kaplan1, Lun Yue2
1Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Abstract:
Excitation of ionic solids with extreme ultraviolet pulses creates localized core-level excitons, which in some cases couple strongly to the lattice. Here, core-level-exciton states of magnesium oxide are studied in the time domain at the Mg L_{2,3} edge with attosecond transient reflectivity spectroscopy. Attosecond pulses trigger the excitation of these short-lived quasiparticles, whose decay is perturbed by time-delayed near-infrared pulses. Combined with a few-state theoretical model, this reveals that the infrared pulse shifts the energy of bright (dipole-allowed) core-level-exciton states as well as induces features arising from dark core-level excitons. We report coherence lifetimes for the two lowest core-level excitons of 2.3±0.2 and 1.6±0.5 fs and show that these are primarily a consequence of strong exciton-phonon coupling, disclosing the drastic influence of structural effects in this ultrafast relaxation process.
Related Concept Videos
UV–Vis Spectroscopy: Molecular Electronic Transitions
Atomic Spectroscopy: Absorption, Emission, and Fluorescence
Fermi Level Dynamics
Electron affinity in semiconductors refers to the energy gap between the minimum of its conduction band and the vacuum level and it is a critical parameter in determining how easily a semiconductor can accept additional electrons.
The work...
Atomic Emission Spectroscopy: Overview
Atomic Fluorescence Spectroscopy
Voltammetric Techniques: Linear-Scan (E vs Time)

