Measurement of three-photon excitation cross-sections of fluorescein from 1154 nm to 1500 nm

Abstract

Measurements of three-photon action cross-sections for fluorescein (dissolved in water, pH ∼11.5) are presented in the excitation wavelength range from 1154 to 1500 nm in ∼50 nm steps. The excitation source is a femtosecond wavelength tunable non-collinear optical parametric amplifier, which has been spectrally filtered with 50 nm full width at half maximum band pass filters. Cube-law power dependance is confirmed at the measurement wavelengths. The three-photon excitation spectrum is found to differ from both the one- and two-photon excitation spectra. The three-photon action cross-section at 1154 nm is more than an order of magnitude larger than those at 1450 and 1500 nm (approximately three times the wavelength of the one-photon excitation peak), which possibly indicates the presence of resonance enhancement.