Heating of Nanosized Liquid Water in High-Intensity Terahertz Pulses**Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 10975033, 11404070 and 11275048, the Science Foundation for Youths of Guangxi Province under Grant No 2014GXNSFBA118022, and the Scientific Research Foundation of Guangxi Education Department under Grant No 2013ZD039.

Abstract

Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of liquid water in picosecond high-power terahertz pulses are performed by using a non-polarizable potential model. Numerical results show that the energy absorption of water molecules exhibits a pronounced resonance with THz pulses in the frequency range of 14-17 THz. With the THz pulse at resonant frequencies, the maximum temperature is about 562K by heating the water at room temperature. Further investigation indicates that the results are independent of the size of the nanoscale water box. The efficiency of energy transfer by resonant absorption is more than seven times of microwave heating. These studies show promising applications of ultrashort THz pulses.