400 kHz repetition rate THz-TDS with 24 mW of average power driven by a compact industrial Yb-laser
arXiv:2209.09796 · doi:10.1364/OE.476261
Abstract
We demonstrate a high average power terahertz time-domain (THZ-TDS) spectrometer based on optical rectification in the tilted-pulse front geometry in lithium niobate at room temperature, driven by a commercial, industrial femtosecond-laser operating with flexible repetition rate between 40 kHz - 400 kHz. The driving laser provides a pulse energy of 41 uJ for all repetition rates, at a pulse duration of 310 fs, allowing us to explore repetition rate dependent effects in our TDS. At the maximum repetition rate of 400 kHz, up to 16.5 W of average power are available to drive our THz source, resulting in a maximum of 24 mW of THz average power with a conversion efficiency of ~ 0.15 % and electric field strength of several tens of kV/cm. At the other available lower repetition rates, we show that the pulse strength and bandwidth of our TDS is unchanged, showing that the THz generation is not affected by thermal effects in this average power region of several tens of watts. The resulting combination of high electric field strength with flexible and high repetition rate is very attractive for spectroscopy, in particular since the system is driven by an industrial, compact laser without the need for external compressors or other specialized pulse manipulation.
References in corpus (7)
- Single-cycle THz pulses with amplitudes exceeding 1 MV/cm generated by optical rectification in LiNbO3
- Higgs Amplitude Mode in BCS Superconductors NbTiN induced by Terahertz Pulse Excitation
- Nonlinear light-matter interaction at terahertz frequencies
- 1kW 1mJ 8-channel ultrafast fiber laser
- Enabling high repetition rate nonlinear THz science with a kilowatt-class sub-100 fs laser source
- Single-cycle, MHz-repetition rate THz source with 66 mW of average power
- Two-Dimensional Terahertz Spectroscopy of Condensed-Phase Molecular Systems