Journal article · Preprint article
Terahertz emission from laser-driven gas plasmas: A plasmonic point of view
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.
Language: | English |
---|---|
Year: | 2018 |
Pages: | 1617-1622 |
ISSN: | 23342536 |
Types: | Journal article and Preprint article |
DOI: | 10.1364/OPTICA.5.001617 |
ORCIDs: | Zhou, B. , Jepsen, P.U. , 0000-0002-3189-9608 , 0000-0002-9767-7012 , 0000-0002-5531-7692 and 0000-0002-9215-1150 |