Terahertz radiation from the vacuum-plasma interface driven by ultrashort intense laser pulses

Zheng-Ming Sheng; Hui-Chun Wu; Kun Li; Jie Zhang

doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.69.025401

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Terahertz radiation from the vacuum-plasma interface driven by ultrashort intense laser pulses

Zheng-Ming Sheng, Hui-Chun Wu, Kun Li, and Jie Zhang

Laboratory of Optical Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100080, China

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Phys. Rev. E 69, 025401(R) – Published 25 February, 2004

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.025401

Abstract

Coherent terahertz (THz) emission from the vacuum-plasma interface induced through laser wake-field excitation has been investigated by particle-in-cell simulations. The emission frequency appears around $τ_{L}^{- 1},$ where $τ_{L}$ is the laser pulse duration, even though the plasma density is distributed inhomogeneously near the interface. The emission amplitude, which is zero on the propagation axis of the incident pulse, increases transversely until reaching the maximum amplitude at the beam edge of the incident pulse and then decays transversely. The emission power scales like $P \sim 10^{8} \times a_{0}^{4} W,$ where $a_{0}$ is the normalized field amplitude of the laser pulse. For an incident pulse of a few tens of femtoseconds at the forced intensity of $3 \times 10^{17} W / {cm}^{2},$ it can generate THz radiation with a power of a few MW and with an energy of several μJ/pulse.

References (17)

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[c1] X.-C. Zhang, B.B. Hu, J.T. Darrow, and D.H. Auston, Appl. Phys. Lett. 56, 1011 (1990).

[c2] X.-C. Zhang, X.F. Ma, Y. Jin, T.-M. Lu, E.P. Boden, P.D. Phelps, K.R. Stewart, and C.P. Yakymyshyn, Appl. Phys. Lett. 61, 3080 (1992).

[c3] R. Kersting, K. Unterrainer, G. Strasser, H.F. Kauffmann, and E. Gornik, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 3038 (1997).

[c4] G.L. Carr, M.C. Martin, W.R. McKinney, K. Jordan, G.R. Neil, and G.P. Williams, Nature (London) 420, 153 (2002).

[c5] M. Abo-Bakr, J. Feikes, K. Holldack, P. Kuske, W.B. Peatman, U. Schade, G. Wuestefeld, and H.-W. Huebers, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 094801 (2003).

[c6] U. Happek et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 2962 (1991).

[c7] D. Hashimshony, A. Zigler, and K. Papadopoulos, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 2806 (2001).

[c8] W.P. Leemans et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 074802 (2003).

[c9] T. Löffler and H.G. Roskos, J. Appl. Phys. 91, 2611 (2002).

[c10] H. Hamster, A. Sullivan, S. Gordon, W. White, and R.W. Falcone, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 2725 (1993); Phys. Rev. E 49, 671 (1994).

[c11] A. Proulx, A. Talebpour, S. Petit, and S.L. Chin, Opt. Commun. 174, 305 (2000); S. Tzortzakis et al., Opt. Lett. 27, 1944 (2002); ibid.O.G. Kosareva et al., 22, 1332 (1997).

[c12] C.-C. Cheng, E.M. Wright, and J.V. Moloney, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 213001 (2001).

[c13] G. Shvets, I. Kaganovich, and E. Startsev, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 139301 (2002); ibid.V.T. Tikhonchuk, 89, 209301 (2002).

[c14] T.Zh. Esirkepov, Comput. Phys. Commun. 135, 144 (2001); ibid.J. Villasenor and O. Buneman, 69, 306 (1992).

[c15] Z.M. Sheng, J. Meyer-ter-Vehn, and A. Pukhov, Phys. Plasmas 5, 3764 (1998).

[c16] L. Gorbunov, P. Mora, and T.M. Antonsen, Jr., Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 2495 (1996); N.E. Andreev, L.M. Gorbunov, V.I. Kirsanov, K. Nakajima, and A. Ogata, Phys. Plasmas 4, 1145 (1997).

[c17] U. Teubner et al., Opt. Commun. 144, 217 (1997); R. Lichters, Ph.D. thesis, Technical University München, 1997.

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Terahertz radiation from the vacuum-plasma interface driven by ultrashort intense laser pulses

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