Optimized terahertz generation via optical rectification in ZnTe crystals

We report on optimal control of the output energy of terahertz (THz) waves generated by optical rectification of femtosecond pulses in ZnTe crystals. An enhancement by a factor up to 2.4 is obtained with chirped pump pulses. The optimized THz wave also displays a spectral broadening. The influence of the optical pulse shaping on the pump pulse propagation, and consequently on the THz generation efficiency, is numerically investigated and discussed.

[1]  Eric Freysz,et al.  Femtosecond optical pulse shaping for tunable terahertz pulse generation , 2010 .

[2]  Yaron Silberberg,et al.  Adaptive ultrashort pulse compression and shaping , 1997 .

[3]  C. Luo,et al.  Saturation of the free carrier absorption in ZnTe crystals. , 2013, Optics express.

[4]  T. Baumert,et al.  Femtosecond pulse shaping by an evolutionary algorithm with feedback , 1997 .

[5]  D. Goswami.  Optical pulse shaping approaches to coherent control , 2003 .

[6]  J. Chen,et al.  Z-scan theory of two-photon absorption saturation and experimental evidence , 2007 .

[7]  H. Rabitz,et al.  Teaching lasers to control molecules. , 1992, Physical review letters.

[8]  Vladislav V. Yakovlev,et al.  Feedback quantum control of molecular electronic population transfer , 1997 .

[9]  Martin Hacker,et al.  A new high-resolution femtosecond pulse shaper , 2001 .

[10]  A. Weiner.  Femtosecond pulse shaping using spatial light modulators , 2000 .

[11]  Antoine Monmayrant,et al.  New phase and amplitude high resolution pulse shaper , 2004 .

[12]  G. Agrawal,et al.  Impact of two-photon absorption on self-phase modulation in silicon waveguides. , 2007, Optics letters.

[13]  D. N. Erschens,et al.  Optimized Optical Rectification and Electro-optic Sampling in ZnTe Crystals with Chirped Femtosecond Laser Pulses , 2011 .

[14]  B. Herbst,et al.  Split-step methods for the solution of the nonlinear Schro¨dinger equation , 1986 .

[15]  James M. Schleicher,et al.  1 Supplementary Information for : Influence of Free-carrier Absorption on Terahertz Generation from ZnTe ( 110 ) , 2010 .

[16]  K. Reimann.  Table-top sources of ultrashort THz pulses , 2007 .

[17]  Ajay Nahata,et al.  A wideband coherent terahertz spectroscopy system using optical rectification and electro‐optic sampling , 1996 .

[18]  Zhao Zhen-yu,et al.  THz Generation by Optical Rectification and Competition with Other Nonlinear Processes , 2008 .

[19]  U. Keller,et al.  Optimization of adaptive feedback control for ultrafast semiconductor spectroscopy , 2001 .