Potential of Sub-THz-Wave Generation in Li<sub>2</sub>B<sub>4</sub>O<sub>7</sub> Nonlinear Crystal at Room and Cryogenic Temperatures

Due to their high optical damage threshold, borate crystals can be used for the efficient nonlinear down-conversion of terawatt laser radiation into the terahertz (THz) frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this work, we carried out a thorough study of the terahertz optical properties...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dmitry Ezhov, Snezhana Turgeneva, Nazar Nikolaev, Alexander Mamrashev, Sergei Mikerin, Fedor Minakov, Andrey Simanchuk, Valery Antsygin, Valery Svetlichnyi, Valery Losev, Yury Andreev
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: MDPI AG 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/ed7dd4e7d9454b0d8e760753b14c5d8a
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Due to their high optical damage threshold, borate crystals can be used for the efficient nonlinear down-conversion of terawatt laser radiation into the terahertz (THz) frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this work, we carried out a thorough study of the terahertz optical properties of the lithium tetraborate crystal (Li<sub>2</sub>B<sub>4</sub>O<sub>7</sub>; LB4) at 295 and 77 K. Approximating the terahertz refractive index in the form of Sellmeier’s equations, we assessed the possibility of converting the radiation of widespread high-power laser sources with wavelengths of 1064 and 800 nm, as well as their second and third harmonics, into the THz range. It was found that four out of eight types of three-wave mixing processes are possible. The conditions for collinear phase matching were fulfilled only for the <i>o</i> − <i>e</i> → <i>o</i> type of interaction, while cooling the crystal to 77 K did not practically affect the phase-matching curves. However, a noticeable increase of birefringence in the THz range with cooling (from 0.12 to 0.16) led to an increase in the coherence length for <i>o − o</i> → <i>e</i> and <i>e</i> − <i>e</i> → <i>e</i> types of interaction, which are potentially attractive for the down-conversion of ultrashort laser pulses.