Novel setups for extremely high power single-cycle terahertz pulse generation by optical rectification

Recently, the generation of near-single-cycle terahertz pulses with 10 mu J energy was demonstrated by optical rectification of ultrashort laser pulses with tilted pulse front in LiNbO3. Here, an optimized imaging setup is proposed for the creation of the tilted pulse front inside the LiNbO3 crystal. Furthermore, a compact setup is proposed which creates the tilted pulse front without imaging, where there is no principal limitation on the pump spot size and, hence, on the terahertz energy. According to model calculations, application of these setups can increase the efficiency by one order of magnitude for 5 mm spot size. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.