Excitation of a Breather Mode of Bound Soliton Pairs inTrans-Polyacetylene by Sub-Five-Femtosecond Optical Pulses

Trans-polyacetylene with a degenerate ground state has a nonlinear excitation of soliton after photoexcitation, due to the electron-phonon coupling. The excess energy of an excited electron-hole pair over a soliton pair creation induces a breather oscillation characterized by collective stretching vibration of the carbon-carbon bonds. A time-frequency analysis of pump probe signal shows that instantaneous frequencies of stretching modes are modulated for approximately 50 fs after excitation and the modulation period is 44+/-3 fs consistent with the theoretical expectation, clearly verifying the breather.