Interferometric coherence transfer modulations in triply vibrationally enhanced four-wave mixing.

Triply vibrationally enhanced (TRIVE) four-wave mixing (FWM) spectroscopy in a mixed frequency/time domain experiment contains new output coherences that isolate nonlinear pathways that involve coherence transfer. Coherence transfer occurs when a thermal bath induces coupling between two states so a quantum mechanical entanglement of a pair of quantum states evolves to entangle a new pair of quantum states. The FWM includes several equivalent coherence pathways that interfere and create a temporal modulation of the output coherence that is a signature of coherence transfer. The transfer shifts the output coherence frequency and isolates coherence transfer pathways from the stronger FWM processes that form the basis of coherent multidimensional spectroscopy. The use of coherence transfer offers the opportunity for another form of coherent multidimensional spectroscopy where cross-peaks appear because of the coherence transfer between quantum states. Since this approach is based on frequency domain methods, it requires only short-term phase coherence during the excitation process so the method is not constrained to accessing the quantum states lying within the excitation pulse bandwidth.