Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Liao, Guoqian
• Li, Yutong
• Liu, Hao
• Scott, Graeme G.
• Neely, David
• Zhang, Yihang
• Zhu, Baojun
• Zhang, Zhe
• Armstrong, Chris
• Zemaityte, Egle
• Bradford, Philip
• Huggard, Peter G.
• Rusby, Dean R.
• McKenna, Paul
• Brenner, Ceri M.
• Woolsey, Nigel C.
• Wang, Weimin
• Sheng, Zhengming
• Zhang, Jie

Titel

Multimillijoule coherent terahertz bursts from picosecond laser-irradiated metal foils

Ist Teil von

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 2019-03, Vol.116 (10), p.3994-3999

Ort / Verlag

United States: National Academy of Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Ultrahigh-power terahertz (THz) radiation sources are essential for many applications, for example, THz-wave-based compact accelerators and THz control over matter. However, to date none of the THz sources reported, whether based upon large-scale accelerators or high-power lasers, have produced THz pulses with energies above the millijoule (mJ) level. Here, we report a substantial increase in THz pulse energy, as high as tens of mJ, generated by a high-intensity, picosecond laser pulse irradiating a metal foil. A further up-scaling of THz energy by a factor of ∼4 is observed when introducing preplasmas at the target-rear side. Experimental measurements and theoretical models identify the dominant THz generation mechanism to be coherent transition radiation, induced by the laser-accelerated energetic electron bunch escaping the target. Observation of THz-field-induced carrier multiplication in high-resistivity silicon is presented as a proof-of-concept application demonstration. Such an extremely high THz energy not only triggers various nonlinear dynamics in matter, but also opens up the research era of relativistic THz optics.