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Generation and detection of pulsed terahertz waves in gas: from elongated plasmas to microplasmas

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Abstract

The past two decades have seen an exponential growth of interest in one of the least explored region of the electromagnetic spectrum, the terahertz (THz) frequency band, ranging from to 0.1 to 10 THz. Once only the realm of astrophysicists studying the background radiation of the universe, THz waves have become little by little relevant in the most diverse fields, such as medical imaging, industrial inspection, remote sensing, fundamental science, and so on. Remarkably, THz wave radiation can be generated and detected by using ambient air as the source and the sensor. This is accomplished by creating plasma under the illumination of intense femtosecond laser fields. The integration of such a plasma source and sensor in THz time-domain techniques allows spectral measurements covering the whole THz gap (0.1 to 10 THz), further increasing the impact of this scientific tool in the study of the four states of matter.

In this review, the authors introduce a new paradigm for implementing THz plasma techniques. Specifically, we replaced the use of elongated plasmas, ranging from few mm to several cm, with sub-mm plasmas, which will be referred to as microplasmas, obtained by focusing ultrafast laser pulses with high numerical aperture optics (NA from 0.1 to 0.9).

The experimental study of the THz emission and detection from laser-induced plasmas of submillimeter size are presented. Regarding the microplasma source, one of the interesting phenomena is that the main direction of THz wave emission is almost orthogonal to the laser propagation direction, unlike that of elongated plasmas. Perhaps the most important achievement is the demonstration that laser pulse energies lower than 1 mJ are sufficient to generate measurable THz pulses from ambient air, thus reducing the required laser energy requirement of two orders of magnitude compared to the state of art. This significant decrease in the required laser energy will make plasma-based THz techniques more accessible to the scientific community, as well as opening new potential industrial applications.

Finally, experimental observations of THz radiation detection with microplasmas are also presented. As fully coherent detection was not achieved in this work, the results presented herein are to be considered a first step to understand the peculiarities involved in using the microplasma as a THz sensor.

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Acknowledgements

This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (ECCS-1229968) and the Army Research Office under Grants No. US ARMY W911NF-14-1-0343 and W911NF-17-1-0428. Part of the research in Zhejiang University (ZJU) was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61473255).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA

    Fabrizio Buccheri & Xi-Cheng Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Pingjie Huang

  3. The Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Imaging Technology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, 100037, China

    Xi-Cheng Zhang

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  1. Fabrizio Buccheri
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  2. Pingjie Huang
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  3. Xi-Cheng Zhang
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Correspondence to Xi-Cheng Zhang.

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Fabrizio Buccheri graduated from University of Palermo with a Bachelor of Engineering and a Master of Engineering in Electronics Engineering in November 2007 and November 2010 respectively, both with full marks and honor. His undergraduate thesis project with the title “Optical Biosensor based on Surface Plasmon Resonance for Wine Quality Control” won the first prize as best undergraduate project at the regional level. In 2010, Fabrizio was awarded a research internship from the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Varennes, Canada, under the supervision of Prof. R. Morandotti. In Canada, Fabrizio developed his experimental master thesis project with the title “Terahertz Time Domain Spectroscopy with Subwavelength Spatial Resolution.” In 2011, Fabrizio is awarded a Fulbright scholarship to support the pursuit of his PhD degree in the United States. He joined Prof. X.-C. Zhang’s research group in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and then followed him to University of Rochester, The Institute of Optics. In 2016, he was awarded the Best Graduate Student Project from The Institute of Optics by Rochester Precision Optics. Fabrizio is an active member of the professional associations OSA and SPIE.

Fabrizio currently works for Prysmian Group designing the next generation monitoring systems for the energy industry.

Pingjie Huang is an associate professor in the State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University (ZJU). He received his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering, with specialty in information sensing and instrumentation from Zhejiang University in 2004 and obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Huazhong Agricultural University in 1996 and Xi’an University of Technology in 1999, respectively. His research interests mainly focus on advanced transducer and measurement, process and environmental information processing and event detection, and computer control system design and development, etc. He is a key member of the research group in Zhejiang University for early warning techniques and systems for urban water quality assurance, NDT&amp;E of conductive structures, food products, water samples, and bio-tissue etc. base on THz-TDS, UV-Vis, and ECT methods. In these five years, he has authored/co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed papers and conference papers.

Supported by the CSC and starting from September 2017 for a period of one year, Pingjie Huang is a visiting scholar in Prof. Xi- Cheng Zhang’s research group in The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester working on terahertz science and technology.

Xi-Cheng Zhang, Parker Givens Chair of Optics, was Director of The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester (UR), NY, a foremost institution in optics and optical physics research and education (Jan. 2012–Jun. 2017). Prior to joining UR, he pioneered world-leading research in the field of ultrafast laser-based terahertz technology and optical physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy NY (‘92-‘12). At RPI, he is the Eric Jonsson Professor of Science; Acting Head at the Department of Physics, Applied Physics &amp; Astronomy; Professor of Electrical, Computer &amp; System; and Founding Director of the Center for THz Research. He is co-founder of Zomega Terahertz Corp. With a B.S. degree (‘82) from Peking University, he earned the M.S. (‘83) and Ph.D. (‘86) degrees in Physics from Brown University, RI.

Dr. Zhang served as Editor-in-Chief of Optics Letters, OSA (‘14- ‘19). He is a Fellow of AAAS, APS, IEEE, OSA, and SPIE. Previous positions included visiting scientist at MIT (‘85), Physical Tech. Division of Amoco Research Center (‘87), EE Dept. at Columbia University (‘87-‘91); Distinguished Visiting Scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech (2006). He holds 29 US patents, and is a prolific author and speaker.

His honors and awards include: Humboldt Prize ‘18); Australian Academy of Science Selby Fellow (‘17); IRMMW-THz Kenneth Button Prize (‘14); OSA William F. Meggers Award (‘12); IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award (‘11); RensselaerWilliam H.Wiley 1866 Award (‘09); Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship &amp; NRC-CIAR Distinguished Visiting Scientist, Canada (‘04); First Heinrich Rudolf Hertz Lecturer, RWTH, Aachen, Germany (‘03). He also served two years as a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE/LEOS. He received Rensselaer Early Career Award (‘96), Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award (‘95), NSF Early Career Award (‘95), K.C. Wong Prize, K.C. Wong Foundation, Hong Kong (‘95), NSF Research Initiation Award (‘92). In ‘93-‘94, he was an AFOSR-SRPF Fellow at Hanscom Air Force Base.

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Buccheri, F., Huang, P. & Zhang, XC. Generation and detection of pulsed terahertz waves in gas: from elongated plasmas to microplasmas. Front. Optoelectron. 11, 209–244 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12200-018-0819-8

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