Abstract-Multimillijoule coherent terahertz bursts from picosecond laser-irradiated metal foils

Guoqian Liao, Yutong Li, Hao Liu, Graeme G. Scott, David Neely, Yihang Zhang, Baojun Zhu, Zhe Zhang, Chris Armstrong, Egle Zemaityte, Philip Bradford, Peter G. Huggard, Dean R. Rusby, Paul McKenna, Ceri M. Brenner, Nigel C. Woolsey, Weimin Wang, Zhengming Sheng, Jie Zhang

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/10/3994

Terahertz (THz) radiation, with frequencies spanning from 0.1 to 10 THz, has long been the most underdeveloped frequency band in electromagnetic waves, mainly due to the dearth of available high-power THz sources. Although the last decades have seen a surge of electronic and optical techniques for generating intense THz radiation, all THz sources reported until now have failed to produce above-millijoule (mJ) THz pulses. We present a THz source that enables a THz pulse energy up to tens of mJ, by using an intense laser pulse to irradiate a metal foil.