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Single shot linear detection of 0.01–10 THz electromagnetic fields

Electro-optic sampling with a supercontinuum in balanced detection

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Abstract

We demonstrate widely tunable and broadband single shot electro-optic detection of THz waveforms with a linear response to the electric field over a wide range. The THz field is encoded to the temporally dispersed spectrum of a supercontinuum whose polarization state is analyzed in balanced detection. With the probe bandwidth corresponding to a Fourier Transform-limited duration below 5 fs, the time window can easily be adjusted in the fs to 100 ps range to be several times longer than the THz pulse without signal distortion. Thanks to a laser fluctuation-free design, the phase retardation (Γ) is measured under shot noise limited conditions with a rms noise below 0.005 over the whole spectral (i.e., temporal) window. The method allows the direct determination of the absolute amplitude of the THz field for the first time in a single shot EO-experiment. The performance of the diagnostic can be achieved with state-of-the-art fs to ps laser sources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Chimie Physique, UMR 8000, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, Bât 349, 91405, Orsay, France

    U. Schmidhammer, V. De Waele & M. Mostafavi

  2. Laboratoire pour l’Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, UMR 7605, CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique, 91120, Palaiseau, France

    J.-R. Marquès & N. Bourgeois

Authors
  1. U. Schmidhammer
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  2. V. De Waele
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  3. J.-R. Marquès
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  4. N. Bourgeois
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  5. M. Mostafavi
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Correspondence to V. De Waele.

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Schmidhammer, U., De Waele, V., Marquès, JR. et al. Single shot linear detection of 0.01–10 THz electromagnetic fields. Appl. Phys. B 94, 95–101 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-008-3262-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-008-3262-5

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