Abstract

Radiation in the THz range has a broad spectrum of applications, reaching from nonlinear THz spectroscopy to biological and medical imaging, but the design of efficient THz sources is a challenging task. Recently, a method using ionizing two color laser fields has attracted much interest, since the generated THz amplitudes are comparably high and exhibit a broad spectrum at the same time [1, 2]. In such a setup, electrons generated by tunnel ionization are accelerated in the two-color laser field and thus build up a current, which partly radiates in the THz range. On the basis of this model, very good agreement between forward emitted THz radiation in experiment and simulation was obtained [3].

© 2011 Optical Society of America