Terahertz emission from laser-driven gas plasmas: A plasmonic point of view
Journal article, 2018

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.
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Published in

Optica

2334-2536 (ISSN)

Vol. 5Issue 12p. 1617-1622

Categorizing

Subject Categories

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

Other Physics Topics

Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics

Identifiers

DOI

10.1364/OPTICA.5.001617

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Latest update

9/13/2019