Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Abstract-Strong Spatial Confinement of Terahertz Wave inside Femtosecond Laser Filament


ACS Photonics, Just Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.6b00512
Publication Date (Web): November 8, 2016
Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

In this paper, a new experimental phenomenon is demonstrated. During the femtosecond laser filamentation, the generated terahertz (THz) pulse has been found to be strongly confined inside the plasma channel, reaching a spatial diameter of a few tens of micrometres. It has been attributed to the formation of a plasma negative dielectric waveguide induced by the transverse inhomogeneous plasma density distribution. The new experimental phenomenon will renew the understanding of the THz wave generation and propagation dynamics during the femtosecond laser and air plasma interaction. Due to this strong spatial confinement, THz electric field strength could be enhanced by orders of magnitude, potentially providing a new approach to perform THz nonlinear optics with low laser energy.

No comments: