Photon echo peak shift experiments in the UV: p-terphenyl in different solvents

In this article we present a new photon echo set-up operating in the UV range and our first results of photon echo peak shift (PEPS) experiments of a small non-polar dye molecule, p-terphenyl (pTP), in three different solvents: ethanol, methanol and 2-propanol. The experiments show the feasibility of UV transient grating and photon echo measurements and highlight the sensitivity of this technique for the study of non-polar solvation dynamics. The transient grating experiments indicate a relaxation of the ground state hole of about 6 ps. The photon echo experiments show that while electronic dephasing occurs on timescales shorter than 100 fs, solvation dynamics timescales are in the picosecond regime, in agreement with the literature.