Abstract
We experimentally investigate the limits of 800-nm-to-terahertz (THz) energy conversion in lithium niobate at room temperature driven by amplified Ti:sapphire laser pulses with tilted pulse front. The influence of the pump central wavelength, pulse duration, and fluence on THz generation is studied. We achieved a high peak efficiency of 0.12% using transform limited 150 fs pulses and observed saturation of the optical-to-THz conversion efficiency at a fluence of for this pulse duration. We experimentally identify two main limitations for the scaling of optical-to-THz conversion efficiencies: (i) the large spectral broadening of the optical pump spectrum in combination with large angular dispersion of the tilted pulse front and (ii) free-carrier absorption of THz radiation due to multi-photon absorption of the 800 nm radiation.
© 2014 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Xiao-jun Wu, Jing-long Ma, Bao-long Zhang, Shu-su Chai, Zhao-ji Fang, Chen-Yi Xia, De-yin Kong, Jin-guang Wang, Hao Liu, Chang-Qing Zhu, Xuan Wang, Cun-Jun Ruan, and Yu-Tong Li
Opt. Express 26(6) 7107-7116 (2018)
Koustuban Ravi, W. Ronny Huang, Sergio Carbajo, Xiaojun Wu, and Franz Kärtner
Opt. Express 22(17) 20239-20251 (2014)
F. Blanchard, X. Ropagnol, H. Hafez, H. Razavipour, M. Bolduc, R. Morandotti, T. Ozaki, and D. G. Cooke
Opt. Lett. 39(15) 4333-4336 (2014)