Fourier domain rotational anisotropy-second harmonic generation.

We describe a novel scheme of detecting rotational anisotropy-second harmonic generation (RA-SHG) signals using a lock-in amplifier referenced to a fast scanning RASHG apparatus. The method directly measures the nth harmonics of the scanning frequency corresponding to SHG signal components of Cn symmetry that appear in a Fourier series expansion of a general RA-SHG signal. GaAs was used as a test sample allowing comparison of point-by-point averaging with the lock-in based method. When divided by the C∞ signal component, the lock-in detected data allowed for both self-referenced determination of ratios of Cn components of up to 1 part in 104 and significantly more sensitive measurement of the relative amount of different Cn components when compared with conventional methods.