Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Abstract-Terahertz Acoustics in Hot Dense Laser Plasmas



Amitava Adak, A. P. L. Robinson, Prashant Kumar Singh, Gourab Chatterjee, Amit D. Lad, John Pasley, and G. Ravindra Kumar
Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 115001 – Published 17 March 2015
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.115001

We present a hitherto unobserved facet of hydrodynamics, namely the generation of an ultrahigh frequency acoustic disturbance in the terahertz frequency range, whose origins are purely hydrodynamic in nature. The disturbance is caused by differential flow velocities down a density gradient in a plasma created by a 30 fs, 800 nm high-intensity laser (5×1016W/cm2). The picosecond scale observations enable us to capture these high frequency oscillations (1.9±0.6THz) which are generated as a consequence of the rapid heating of the medium by the laser. Adoption of two complementary techniques, namely pump-probe reflectometry and pump-probe Doppler spectrometry provides unambiguous identification of this terahertz acoustic disturbance. Hydrodynamic simulations well reproduce the observations, offering insight into this process.
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