Abstract

Recently, the technique of generation and detection of free-space THz radiation has been applied widely to study transient effects in different systems [1-3]. One applications is to use THz emission to probe the screening dynamics of the electric field in the picosecond time domain [2,3]. The usual setup for this application involves two femtosecond pulses. One pulse injects electronhole pairs in the electric field region, which then screen the electric field. The second optical pulse, which comes later, produces THz emission. The change in the THz signal observed from the second pulse at different time delays reflects the screening dynamics of the electric field following the first optical pulse.

© 1994 Optical Society of America