Author: Zapata, L.E.
Paper Title Page
MOPSO34 Highly Efficient, High-energy THz Pulses from Cryo-cooled Lithium Niobate for Accelerator and FEL Applications 68
 
  • K.-H. Hong, E. Granados, S.-W. Huang, W.R. Huang, F.X. Kaertner, R. Koustuban, L.E. Zapata
    MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  • F.X. Kaertner
    CFEL, Hamburg, Germany
 
  Funding: This work was supported by DARPA under contract N66001-1-11-4192.
Intense, ultrafast THz fields are of great interest for electron acceleration, beam manipulation and measurement, and pump-probe experiments with coherent soft/hard x-ray sources based on FELs or inverse Compton scattering sources. Acceleration at THz frequencies has an advantage over RF in terms of accessing high electric-field gradients (>100 MV/cm), while the beam delivery can be treated quasi-optically. However, high-field THz pulse generation is still demanding when compared with conventional RF generation. In this paper, we present highly efficient, single-cycle, 0.45 THz pulse generation by optical rectification of 1.03 μm pulses in cryogenically cooled lithium niobate (LN). Using a near-optimal duration of 680 fs and a pump energy of 1.2 mJ, we report conversion efficiencies above 3% [1], >10 times higher than previous report (0.24%) [2]. Cryogenic cooling of lithium niobate significantly reduces the THz absorption, which will enable the scaling of THz pulse energies to the mJ. We will also report on polarization and mode conversion using segmented THz waveplates to generate radially-polarized TEM01 modes, suitable for THz electron acceleration in dielectric waveguide.
[1] S.-W. Huang et al., Opt. Lett. 38, 796-798 (2013).
[2] J. A. Fülöp et al., Opt. Lett. 37, 557-559 (2012).