Ultrafast laser pulse chirp effects on laser-generated nanoacoustic strains in Silicon.

Nanoacoustic strains are generated in Silicon by chirped femtosecond laser pulses using thin Titanium films as transducers. We investigate the effect that the generating laser pulse chirp has on the amplitude of the induced strains, manifested as Brillouin oscillations observed in degenerate femtosecond pump-probe transient reflectivity measurements. The strain amplitude is larger when negatively chirped pulses are used, which is attributed to the more efficient conversion of laser pulse light into acoustic strain in the Titanium transducer. Our present studies clearly show that the dependence of the Brillouin amplitude and the lattice strain is a non-monotonous function of the laser chirp parameter. An optimum negative laser pulse chirp is found for which the strain amplitude is maximized. A detailed thermomechanical model satisfactorily supports the experimental findings. In such a way, it is possible to suppress or enhance the induced nanoacoustic strain amplitude, thus all-optically controlling it by at least a factor of two.

Quantitative interpretation of binding reactions of rapidly diffusing species using fluorescence recovery after photobleaching.

Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) measurements offer an important tool for analyzing diffusion and binding processes. Confocal scanning laser microscopes that are used in FRAP experiments bleach regions with a radially Gaussian distributed profile. Previous attempts to derive analytical expressions in the case of processes governed by fast diffusion have overlooked the characteristics of the instruments used to perform FRAP measurements and therefore led to approximating solutions. In the present paper, bleaching laser beam characteristics are incorporated into an improved model to provide a more rigorous and accurate method. The proposed model simulates binding inside bounded regions, and it leads to FRAP curves that depend on the on and off rates that can be employed to determine the rate constants. It can be used in conjunction with experimental data acquired with confocal scanning laser microscopes to investigate the biophysical properties of proteins in living cells. The model aims to improve the accuracy when determining rate constants by taking into account a more realistic scenario of the light-matter interaction.