Single-cycle terahertz pulses with amplitudes exceeding 1 MV/cm generated by optical rectification in LiNbO3 and applications to nonlinear optics

By H. Hirori, Koichiro Tanaka. Other Conferences, 2011

755 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using a tilted-pump-pulse-front scheme, we generate single-cycle terahertz (THz) pulses by optical rectification of femtosecond laser pulses in LiNbO3. In our THz generation setup, to obtain optimal THz beam characteristics and pumpto- THz conversion efficiency the condition that an image of a grating coincides with a tilted-optical-pulse front is fulfilled. Generated THz pulses have spectra centered at around 1 THz. A designed focusing geometry enables tight focus of the THz beam with a spot size close to the diffraction limit, and the maximum THz electric field of 1.2 MV/cm is obtained. In addition, the nonlinear interactions of GaAs quantum wells with the intense THz pulses have been studied. Here we show that the intense THz pulse, unlike a DC bias, can generate a substantial number of electron-hole pairs forming excitons that emit near-infrared luminescence. The bright luminescence associated with carrier multiplication suggests that the carriers coherently driven by a strong field can efficiently gain enough kinetic energy to induce a series of impact ionizations, which we demonstrate can increase the number of carriers by about three orders of magnitude on picosecond timescale.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/62dc32235a769c9f47ab5733dfa6c7624800c2e1

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Andreja Abina
2. Uroš Puc
3. M. Jazbinšek
4. S. Yoshida
5. H. Shigekawa
6. Aleksander Zidansek

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Andreja Abina
2. Uroš Puc
3. M. Jazbinšek
4. Aleksander Zidansek

Citations in the corpus

• Real-space coherent manipulation of electrons in a single tunnel junction by single-cycle terahertz electric fields (2016, methodology): “Intense single-cycle THz electric field transients were generated using a LiNbO3 prism in a tilted-pulse-front configuration [1].”
• Organic Crystals for THz Photonics (2019, background): “coherent THz manipulation of quantum states, high-order harmonic generation, nonlinear optical processes, and nonlinear transport phenomena in solids [182].”