Terahertz emission from laser-driven gas plasmas: A plasmonic point of view

I. Thiele*, B. Zhou, A. Nguyen, E. Smetanina, R. Nuter, K. J. Kaltenecker, P. González De Alaiza Martínez, J. Déchard, L. Bergé, P.U. Jepsen, Stefan Skupin

*Corresponding author for this work

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    Abstract

    We disclose an unanticipated link between plasmonics and nonlinear frequency down-conversion in laser-induced gas-plasmas. For two-color femtosecond pump pulses, a plasmonic resonance is shown to broaden the terahertz emission spectra significantly. We identify the resonance as a leaky mode, which contributes to the emission spectra whenever electrons are excited along a direction where the plasma size is smaller than the plasma wavelength. As a direct consequence, such resonances can be controlled by changing the polarization properties of elliptically shaped driving laser pulses. Both experimental results and 3D Maxwell consistent simulations confirm that a significant terahertz pulse shortening and spectral broadening can be achieved by exploiting the transverse driving laser beam shape as an additional degree of freedom. © 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalOptica
    Volume5
    Issue number12
    Pages (from-to)1617-1622
    Number of pages6
    ISSN2334-2536
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018

    Bibliographical note

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

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