Abstract-Terahertz radiation in alkali vapor plasmas

Xuan Sun¹ and X.-C. Zhang^1,a)

1 Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA

a) Electronic mail: Xi-Cheng.Zhang@rochester.edu.
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/104/19/10.1063/1.4876602
Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 191106 (2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4876602

By taking advantage of low ionization potentials of alkali atoms, we demonstrate terahertz wavegeneration from cesium and rubidium vapor plasmas with an amplitude nearly one order of magnitude larger than that from nitrogen gas at low pressure (0.02–0.5 Torr). The observed phenomena are explained by the numerical modeling based upon electron tunneling ionization