Tunable and efficient terahertz radiation generation by photomixing of two super Gaussian laser pulses in a corrugated magnetized plasma

Abstract

A scheme of terahertz (THz) radiation generation is investigated by photo-mixing of two super Gaussian laser beams having different frequencies (ω1, ω2) and wave numbers (k→1, k→2) in a performed corrugated plasma embedded with transverse dc magnetic field. Lasers exert a nonlinear ponderomotive force, imparting an oscillatory velocity to plasma electrons that couples with the density corrugations (n′=nα0eiαz) to generate a strong transient nonlinear current, that resonantly derives THz radiation of frequency ∼ωh (upper hybrid frequency). The periodicity of density corrugations is suitably chosen to transfer maximum momentum from lasers to THz radiation at phase matching conditions ω=ω1−ω2 and k→=k→1−k→2+α→. The efficiency, power, beam quality, and tunability of the present scheme exhibit high dependency upon the applied transverse dc magnetic field along with q-indices and beam width parameters (a0) of super Gaussian lasers. In the present scheme, efficiency ∼10−2 is achieved with the optimization of all these parameters.