Detection defines dephasing in two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy of materials: Coherent field emission vs incoherent population observables

The homogeneous spectral linewidth associated with light–matter interactions is a fundamental descriptor of the optical properties of materials, governed by the quantum dynamics of the condensed-matter system. We discuss here that the homogeneous linewidth measured by means of two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy depends not only on the intrinsic microscopic dynamics of the material, but also on the observable through which those dynamics are projected onto the measurement. In this Perspective, we develop a unified framework showing that identical microscopic dynamics can yield different experimentally inferred dephasing times because different detection operators project different sectors of the nonequilibrium dynamics. For coherent emitted-field measurements, the observed linewidth largely retains its conventional connection to the optical coherence time T2. By contrast, in population-detected modalities such as photoluminescence, photocurrent, and other action-detected two-dimensional spectroscopies, the apparent linewidth can additionally encode excited-state population redistribution dynamics, leading naturally to an effective coherence time T2,eff. Using a coupled-mode model propagated under a common Liouvillian, we show that identical microscopic dynamics yield distinct apparent dephasing times when projected onto coherent-emission and population-derived observables. The detection observable is, therefore, not merely part of the experimental implementation but determines what dynamical information remains experimentally observable and how homogeneous linewidths should be interpreted as material descriptors.