2D Physics Blog-Relativistic Laser-Driven Table-top Intense Terahertz Transition Radiation Sources

From Left to Right: Guo-Qian Liao, Yu-Tong Li, Xiao-Hui Yuan 
http://www.2physics.com/2016/07/relativistic-laser-driven-table-top.html

Authors: Guo-Qian Liao¹, Yu-Tong Li^1,4, Hao Liu¹, Yi-Hang Zhang¹, Xiao-Hui Yuan^2,4, Xu-Lei Ge², Su Yang², Wen-Qing Wei², Wei-Min Wang^1,4, Zheng-Ming Sheng^2,3,4, Jie Zhang^2,4 

Affiliation:
¹Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 
²Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (MoE) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China 
³SUPA, Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom,
⁴Collaborative Innovation Center of IFSA (CICIFSA), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.

Intense terahertz (THz) radiation sources, the frequency of which lies between far-infrared waves and microwaves in the electromagnetic spectrum, are significantly important for THz sciences and applications in many interdisciplinary fields [1]. Currently THz radiation with energies of >100 μJ/pulse is usually obtained with huge-sized accelerators [2]. Laser-plasma interactions provide a unique opportunity to achieve tabletop high-field THz radiation sources. With the relativistic electron beams accelerated by laser wakefields in gas targets, Leemans et al. have obtained ∼0.3 μJ THz pulses through transition radiation [3].

Strong THz radiation from laser-solid interactions has attracted much interest [4,5]. Compared with gas targets, fast electron beams from solid foil targets have much higher charge, up to nC or even near μC. Usually the bunch length of the electron beam accelerated by a femtosecond laser pulse is of the order of ~10 μm, which is smaller than the wavelength of THz radiation. Therefore, the forward fast electrons will induce coherent transition radiation (CTR) in the THz regime when crossing the rear surface-vacuum boundary (see Figure 1). This has so far not yet been verified experimentally.

Figure 1: Illustration of the THz generation due to the CTR of fast electron beams at the rear surface of a foil target irradiated by intense laser pulses. 

In our recent work [6], we have experimentally demonstrated intense coherent THz transition radiation by laser-driven, relativistic electron beams crossing the rear surface of a thin solid foil. The experiment was carried out on the femtosecond laser system at the Laboratory for Laser Plasma, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. From the rear side of a 5 μm thick metal foil irradiated by a 2 J/ 30 fs laser pulse, we obtain an intense THz pulse with an energy of ~400 μJ, which is comparable to the energy level of the conventional accelerator based THz sources [2]. The measured THz radiation covers a bandwidth up to 30 THz [see Figure 2(a)], and has an asymmetric “double-wing-like” angular distribution [see Figure 2(b)]. Both CTR-based theoretical calculations and two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations can well reproduce the experimental measurements.

Figure 2: [click on the image to view with higher resolution] (a) Experimentally measured (blue circle dashed) and simulated (black solid) frequency spectra of the THz radiation from the metal foil. (b) Angular distributions of the THz radiation measured (blue circle), simulated (black dashed), and calculated with CTR model (red solid), all of which are normalized by the THz intensity at 75°.

The CTR model predicts that the THz radiation intensity is closely dependent on the target parameters, for example, the size and dielectric property of the target. To verify this, several types of targets are adopted to understand the THz generation. For the mass-limited metal targets, the observed dependence of THz intensity on the target sizes [see Figure 3(a)] can be explained by the CTR model modified by diffraction effect [7]. For the metal-PE double layered targets, we find that there exists an optimal PE thickness when increasing the thickness of the PE layer from 15 μm to 500 μm [see Figure 3(b)]. This can be explained by the CTR model considering the formation-zone effects [8]. Compared with the THz radiation from the PE targets, we find the THz intensity from the targets with a 5 μm thick metal coating at the target rear is dramatically enhanced by over 10 times [see Figure 3(c)]. This is a solid evidence for transition radiation.

Figure 3: [click on the image to view with higher resolution] (a) Experimentally measured THz intensity (blue circles) and theoretically calculated diffraction modification factor D (curves) as a function of target sizes. (b) Measured THz intensity at 75° (black square) and -75° (blue circle) from the metal-PE targets as a function of the thickness of the PE layer. (c) Comparison of the THz signals measured from the 40 μm thick PE targets with or without a 5 μm metal coating at the rear. 

The laser-plasma-based THz transition radiation presented here could be a promising tabletop high-energy THz source. Moreover, it may provide a potential diagnostic to infer the spatiotemporal distribution of the high-flux fast electron beams generated in laser-solid interactions. 

References: 
[1] M. Tonouchi, “Cutting-edge terahertz technology”, Nature Photonics, 1, 97 (2007). Abstract. 
[2] Ziran Wu, Alan S. Fisher, John Goodfellow, Matthias Fuchs, Dan Daranciang, Mark Hogan, Henrik Loos, Aaron Lindenberg, “Intense terahertz pulses from SLAC electron beams using coherent transition radiation”, Review of Scientific Instruments, 84, 022701 (2013). Abstract. 
[3] W. P. Leemans, C. G. R. Geddes, J. Faure, Cs. Tóth, J. van Tilborg, C. B. Schroeder, E. Esarey, G. Fubiani, D. Auerbach, B. Marcelis, M. A. Carnahan, R. A. Kaindl, J. Byrd, M. C. Martin, “Observation of terahertz emission from a laser-plasma accelerated electron bunch crossing a plasma-vacuum boundary”, Physical Review Letters, 91, 074802 (2003). Abstract. 
[4] G. Q. Liao, Y. T. Li, C. Li, L. N. Su, Y. Zheng, M. Liu, W. M. Wang, Z. D. Hu, W. C. Yan, J. Dunn, J. Nilsen, J. Hunter, Y. Liu, X. Wang, L. M. Chen, J. L. Ma, X. Lu, Z. Jin, R. Kodama, Z. M. Sheng, J. Zhang, “Bursts of terahertz radiation from large-scale plasmas irradiated by relativistic picosecond laser pulses”, Physical Review Letters, 114, 255001 (2015). Abstract. 
[5] A. Gopal, S. Herzer, A. Schmidt, P. Singh, A. Reinhard, W. Ziegler, D. Brömmel, A. Karmakar, P. Gibbon, U. Dillner, T. May, H-G. Meyer, G. G. Paulus, “Observation of Gigawatt-class THz pulses from a compact laser-driven particle accelerator”, Physical Review Letters, 111, 074802 (2013). Abstract. 
[6] Guo-Qian Liao, Yu-Tong Li, Yi-Hang Zhang, Hao Liu, Xu-Lei Ge, Su Yang, Wen-Qing Wei, Xiao-Hui Yuan, Yan-Qing Deng, Bao-Jun Zhu, Zhe Zhang, Wei-Min Wang, Zheng-Ming Sheng, Li-Ming Chen, Xin Lu, Jing-Long Ma, Xuan Wang, Jie Zhang, “Demonstration of coherent terahertz transition radiation from relativistic laser-solid interactions”, Physical Review Letters, 116, 205003 (2016). Abstract. 
[7] C. B. Schroeder, E. Esarey, J. van Tilborg, W. P. Leemans, “Theory of coherent transition radiation generated at a plasma-vacuum interface”, Physical Review E, 69, 016501 (2004). Abstract. 
[8] Luke C. L. Yuan, C. L. Wang, H. Uto, “Formation-zone effect in transition radiation due to ultrarelativistic particles”, Physical Review Letters, 25, 1513 (1970). Abstract.