Study of polarizer characteristics with a high-power terahertz free electron laser

Though wire grid and strip polarizers are widely used for control of submillimeter radiation, both calculated and experimentally measured values of their transmission are often contradict one another. We have measured the transmission of wire and thin-film photolithographic polarizers at a wavelength of 0.13-mm using 100 W free electron laser radiation and compared the results with previous experiments and calculations. Using a thin-film photolithographic polarizer we showed that radiation of the Novosibirsk FEL after traveling through a 14-m beamline is plane-polarized with the degree of polarization better than 99.6%.