Intense THz Pulses with large ponderomotive potential generated from large aperture photoconductive antennas

We report the generation of free space terahertz (THz) pulses with energy up to 8.3 +/- 0.2 mu J from an encapsulated interdigitated ZnSe Large Aperture Photo-Conductive Antenna (LAPCA). An aperture of 12.2 cm(2) is illuminated using a 400 nm pump laser with multi-mJ energies at 10 Hz repetition rate. The calculated THz peak electric field is 331 +/- 4 kV/cm with a spectrum characterized by a median frequency of 0.28 THz. Given its relatively low frequency, this THz field will accelerate charged particles efficiently having very large ponderomotive energy of 15 +/- 1 eV for electrons in vacuum. The scaling of the emission is studied with respect to the dimensions of the antenna, and it is observed that the capacitance of the LAPCA leads to a severe decrease in and distortion of the biasing voltage pulse, fundamentally limiting the maximum applied bias field and consequently the maximum energy of the radiated THz pulses. In order to demonstrate the advantages of this source in the strong field regime, an open-aperture Z-scan experiment was performed on n-doped InGaAs, which showed significant absorption bleaching. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America