Terahertz pulse generation in an organic crystal by optical rectification and resonant excitation of molecular charge transfer

Organic molecular crystals that are extremely efficient at terahertz-pulse generation are in- vestigated. Terahertz pulses produced by optical rectification at 800 nm in (-)2-(alpha-methylbenzyl-amino)-5-nitropyridine have an order of magnitude higher power than those generated in the commonly used inorganic crystal ZnTe. The organic molecular crystals were also found to generate terahertz pulses when excited on resonance at 400 nm. This may pave the way for studying ultrafast charge-transport dynamics in three dimensions. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.