Carbon-based black pigments, a widely used class of pigments, are difficult to differentiate with the noninvasive techniques currently used in cultural heritage science. We utilize pump-probe microscopy to distinguish four common carbon-based black pigments as pure pigments, as two-component black pigment mixtures, and as a mixture of a black and a colorful pigment. This work also demonstrates that even nominally homogeneous pigments present remarkable, and useful, heterogeneity in pump-probe microscopy.
@article{arxiv.2403.08897,
title = {Noninvasive identification of carbon-based black pigments with pump-probe microscopy},
author = {Heidi V. Kastenholz and Michael I. Topper and Warren S. Warren and Martin C. Fischer and David Grass},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.08897},
year = {2025}
}