Characterization of the complex third-order susceptibility of myoglobin using diffractive optics

Abstract

We measured ultrafast structural relaxations in horse carboxymyoglobin (MbCO) using heterodyne-detected transient grating spectroscopy. The anisotropic component of the protein response to photodissociation was isolated by acquiring all nonzero elements of the complex third-order nonlinear susceptibility (χ(3)) tensor.