Heterodyne detection scheme for light-induced transient grating experiment

A novel heterodyne detection scheme for light-induced transient grating technique is presented. The heterodyne detection is achieved coherently mixing the picosecond pulses of diffracted and scattered light. A phase difference between these pulses is controlled by moving a holographic beam splitter along its grating vector. This approach is employed to study a competition of coexisting electronic and thermal optical nonlinearities in CVD grown diamond films in sub-nanosecond time domain and to determine carrier parameters.