Advancing non-equilibrium ARPES experiments by a 9.3 eV coherent ultrafast photon source

The quest for investigating the non-equilibrium dynamics of the band structure of strongly-correlated materials over their entire Brillouin zone is a primary objective. However, the actual ultrafast UV light sources are not suitable for addressing several critical questions in the field. Here we report on a novel light source generating sub-250 fs, 9.3 eV photon energy light pulses at 250 kHz repetition rate, obtained via third-harmonic generation in Xe of frequency-doubled 50 fs laser pulses at 1.55 eV. By reporting the measured band dispersion of a Cu(111) crystal and the non-equilibrium dynamics of the Bi2Se3 topological insulator, we prove that this source is suitable for studying the non-equilibrium dynamics of the entire Fermi surface of several complex materials, with high signal statistics and limited space-charge effect. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.