Abstract-Towards terawatt-scale spectrally-tunable terahertz pulses via relativistic laser-foil interactions

Guo-Qian Liao, Hao Liu, Graeme G. Scott, Yi-Hang Zhang, Bao-Jun Zhu, Zhe Zhang, Yu-Tong Li, Chris Armstrong, Egle Zemaityte, Philip Bradford, Dean R. Rusby, David Neely, Peter G. Huggard, Paul McKenna, Ceri M. Brenner, Nigel C. Woolsey, Wei-Min Wang, Zheng-Ming Sheng, Jie Zhang

https://journals.aps.org/prx/accepted/f9077Ka7Ta61f80ac4557eb8820820c019e7c6ab0

An ever-increasing number of strong-field applications, like ultrafast coherent control over matter and light, require driver light pulses that are of both high power and tunable spectra. However, the realization of such a source in the terahertz (THz) band has long been a formidable challenge. Here, we demonstrate, via experiment and theory, the efficient production of terawatt (TW)-level THz pulses from high-intensity picosecond laser irradiation on a metal foil. The THz spectra can be manipulated effectively by tuning the laser pulse duration or target size. An analytical model that well reproduces the experimental results is developed, and the spectral tunability stems from a hybrid THz generation mechanism driven jointly by both the high-current electron emission and the time-varying electron sheath at the target rear. In addition to being an ultrabright source (brightness temperature ~10^21 K) for extreme THz science, the THz radiation presented here also enables a unique in-situ laser-plasma diagnostic, and it has been employed to quantify the escaping electrons and the transient sheath, in good agreement with experimental measurements.

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.

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, and Jie Zhang

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/02/12/1815256116


Ultrahigh-power terahertz (THz) radiation sources are essential for many applications, for example, THz-wave-based compact accelerators and THz control over matter. However, to date none of the THz sources reported, whether based upon large-scale accelerators or high-power lasers, have produced THz pulses with energies above the millijoule (mJ) level. Here, we report a substantial increase in THz pulse energy, as high as tens of mJ, generated by a high-intensity, picosecond laser pulse irradiating a metal foil. A further up-scaling of THz energy by a factor of ∼4 is observed when introducing preplasmas at the target-rear side. Experimental measurements and theoretical models identify the dominant THz generation mechanism to be coherent transition radiation, induced by the laser-accelerated energetic electron bunch escaping the target. Observation of THz-field-induced carrier multiplication in high-resistivity silicon is presented as a proof-of-concept application demonstration. Such an extremely high THz energy not only triggers various nonlinear dynamics in matter, but also opens up the research era of relativistic THz optics.

Abstract-THz pulses over 50 millijoules generated from relativistic picosecond laser-plasma interactions

Guoqian Liao, Yutong Li, Hao Liu, Jie Zhang,

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325118432_THz_pulses_over_50_millijoules_generated_from_relativistic_picosecond_laser-plasma_interactions

Ultrahigh-power terahertz (THz) radiation sources are essential for many applications, such as nonlinear THz physics, THz-wave based compact accelerators, etc. However, until now none of THz sources reported, whether based upon large-scale accelerators or high power lasers, have produced THz pulses with energies above the millijoule (mJ) barrier. Here we report on the efficient generation of low-frequency (<3 THz) THz pulses with unprecedentedly high energies over 50 mJ. The THz radiation is produced by coherent transition radiation of a picosecond laser-accelerated ultra-bright bunch of relativistic electrons from a solid target. Such high energy THz pulses can not only trigger various nonlinear dynamics in matter, but also open up a new research field of relativistic THz optics 

Abstract-Highly efficient generation of 0.2 mJ terahertz pulses in lithium niobate at room temperature with sub-50 fs chirped Ti:sapphire laser pulses

Xiao-jun Wu, Jing-long Ma, Bao-long Zhang, Shu-su Chai, Zhao-ji Fang, Chen-Yi Xia, De-yin Kong, Jin-guang Wang, Hao Liu, Chang-Qing Zhu, Xuan Wang, Cun-Jun Ruan, and Yu-Tong Li

https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-26-6-7107#top

We demonstrate generation of 0.2 mJ terahertz (THz) pulses in lithium niobate driven by Ti:sapphire laser pulses at room temperature. Employing tilted pulse front technique, the 800 nm-to-THz energy conversion efficiency has been optimized to 0.3% through chirping the sub-50 fs pump laser pulses to overcome multi-photon absorption and to extend effective interaction length for phase matching. Our approach paves the way for mJ-level THz generation via optical rectification using existing Ti:sapphire laser systems which can deliver Joule-level pulse energy with sub-50 fs pulse duration.

© 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

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.

Abstract-Demonstration of Coherent Terahertz Transition Radiation from Relativistic Laser-Solid Interactions

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, and Jie Zhang

http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.205003

Coherent transition radiation in the terahertz (THz) region with energies of sub-mJ/pulse has been demonstrated by relativistic laser-driven electron beams crossing the solid-vacuum boundary. Targets including mass-limited foils and layered metal-plastic targets are used to verify the radiation mechanism and characterize the radiation properties. Observations of THz emissions as a function of target parameters agree well with the formation-zone and diffraction model of transition radiation. Particle-in-cell simulations also well reproduce the observed characteristics of THz emissions. The present THz transition radiation enables not only a potential tabletop brilliant THz source, but also a novel noninvasive diagnostic for fast electron generation and transport in laser-plasma interactions.

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• Received 12 January 2016

DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.205003

Abstract-Demonstration of coherent terahertz transition radiation from relativistic laser-solid interactions

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, and Jie Zhang

https://journals.aps.org/prl/accepted/64073Y26Ac61c24186100044b132eaa55a298f122

Coherent transition radiation in the terahertz (THz) region with energies of sub-mJ/pulse has been demonstrated by relativistic laser-driven electron beams crossing the solid-vacuum boundary. Targets including mass-limited foils and layered metal-plastic targets are used to verify the radiation mechanism and characterize the radiation properties. Observations of THz emissions as a function of target parameters agree well with the formation-zone and diffraction model of transition radiation. Particle-in-cell simulations also well reproduce the observed characteristics of THz emissions. The present THz transition radiation enables not only a potential tabletop brilliant THz source, but also a novel noninvasive diagnostic for fast electron generation and transport in laser-plasma interactions.