THz Generation and Detection by Nonlinear Optical Methods

Sourabh Mukhopadhyay¹

1. Department of Physics, Jhargram Raj College (Govt. of West Bengal), Jhargram, INDIA.

Section:Review Paper, Product Type: Isroset-Journal
Vol.6 , Issue.2 , pp.10-20, Apr-2018

CrossRef-DOI:   https://doi.org/10.26438/ijsrpas/v6i2.1020

Online published on Apr 30, 2018

Copyright © Sourabh Mukhopadhyay . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
This article presents a comprehensive review on efficient THz generation by optical rectification and detection by electro-optic sampling. Starting with the basics of optical rectification and electro-optic field sensor, chronological development of the subject is presented. Performance of several zinc-blende crystals for THz generation as well as electro-optics sampling is discussed in detail and their comparative superiority relating to different crystals parameters are justified with experimental results. Organic crystals, due their higher nonlinearity, are important for THz generation by optical rectification and got special attention in this article. Phase-matching for THz generation by optical rectification is always a challenge and this issue is addressed with different schemes employed till date and optical rectification in tilted pulse front geometry is elaborated since it can dramatically increase the effective interaction length by achieving phase-matching. Material absorption in THz domain, which limits the THz generation efficiency, is however overcome by cryogenic cooling and performance of periodically poled lithium niobate under such low temperature for optical rectification in different schemes is presented in detail. The success in continuously increase of THz generation efficiency promises future high power THz devices for their application in basic science and technology. Recent propositions and theoretical models with predictions of orders of magnitude increase in the THz generation efficiency naturally pave the path with future challenges for the experimentalists. This article clearly figures out the directions of future research for THz generation by optical rectification and detection by electro-optic field sensor.

Key-Words / Index Term :
Optical rectification, Difference frequency generation, Phase-matching, Electro-optic sampling,

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