Abstract

Producing terahertz (THz) radiation by ultrashort laser pulses has become an active field of research because of its promising applications in, e.g., spectroscopy and medical imaging [1]. Efficient THz emitters can be obtained by focusing into air a two-color femtosecond light pulse, composed of fundamental (FH) and second (SH) harmonics, in order to create a plasma channel that acts as a frequency converter [2]. Recent studies [3,4] showed that increasing the pump wavelength enhances the THz energy. However, there is no consensus on the gain factors expected when pushing the FH wavelength, λ₀, from the near-IR to the mid-IR range. Clerici et al. [3] reported THz energy yields scaling like ${\lambda }_0^{4.6}$ in the range 0.8 - 1.8 µ m. By contrast, according to the local-current model [2,4], the largest THz energy attained by two colors with π /2 relative phase should follow a scaling in ${\lambda }_0^2$ only.

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