Theory of heterodyne pump-probe experiments with femtosecond pulses

We give the first analysis of heterodyne experiments that includes the propagation along the waveguide. Under the assumption that the material polarization is adiabatically eliminated we derive simple analytic expressions for the coherent coupling term, exact for Gaussian pulses and a good approximation for other shapes. We find that the measured signal does not display any phase dependence close to zero pump-probe delay. A four-wave mixing band is identified in the heterodyne signal, and a new class of experiments is proposed by analogy with the spatial case. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America.