Abstract

Laser-induced plasma acoustic waves are enhanced under the illumination of single-cycle terahertz (THz) radiation, making THz-enhanced acoustics (TEA) a useful method for THz wave detection. During a single-cycle THz pulse with its peak field of $100\mathrm{kV}/\mathrm{cm}$, a pressure enhancement of 10% is observed throughout the acoustic spectrum up to $140\mathrm{kHz}$, and the TEA signal is found to increase linearly with THz wave intensity. By using dual-color laser excitation to manipulate free electron drift, it is possible to modulate the enhanced acoustic signal and recover a coherent THz time-domain waveform by simply “listening” to the plasma.

© 2010 Optical Society of America

Coherent detection of terahertz pulses via gas plasma induced by few-cycle laser pulses with fixed carrier envelope phase

Jinsong Liu, Hu Wang, Kejia Wang, Zhengang Yang, and Shenglie Wang
Opt. Lett. 38(7) 1104-1106 (2013)

Ultrafast broadband terahertz waveform measurement utilizing ultraviolet plasma photoemission

Jingle Liu, Jianming Dai, and X.-C. Zhang
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(4) 796-804 (2011)

Phase evolution of terahertz radiation from femtosecond laser-induced air plasma

Zhen Zhang, Yanping Chen, Zhelin Zhang, Tianhao Xia, Jiayang Zhang, Zhengming Sheng, and Jie Zhang
Opt. Lett. 45(7) 1966-1969 (2020)

Ionization-induced conversion of ultrashort Bessel beam to terahertz pulse

V. A. Kostin and N. V. Vvedenskii
Opt. Lett. 35(2) 247-249 (2010)

Fine control of terahertz radiation from filamentation by molecular lensing in air

M. Durand, Y. Liu, A. Houard, and A. Mysyrowicz
Opt. Lett. 35(10) 1710-1712 (2010)