Freestanding sample holder for ultrafast optical spectroscopy at low temperatures.

Ultrafast optical spectroscopy techniques are often employed to gain information about samples that are liquid at room temperature and frozen at cryogenic temperatures. However, the measurements suffer from the presence of unwanted, non-resonant signals originating in the sample cell walls. Most of these artifacts can be avoided in the measurements performed at room temperature by using liquid jet systems, i.e., by removing the sample cell. However, these systems cannot be used in low temperature measurements, when the sample is frozen. Herein we describe a freestanding sample holder that allows low temperature ultrafast spectroscopy measurements free of artifacts caused by the sample cell.