  The deep ultraviolet, the bandgap region of dielectrics, is not readily
accessible for established methods of ultrafast spectroscopy. Here, a miniature
beamline, where a tailored deep ultraviolet field is used immediately after the
noncollinear generation without subsequent optical elements, is introduced for
transient absorption and dispersion spectroscopy. The near-bandgap region of
diamond in the presence of a few-femtosecond pump pulse is explored where the
delayed dynamical Franz-Keldysh effect and the almost instantaneous optical
Kerr effect coexist.
