Single-cycle, 643 mW average power terahertz source based on tilted pulse front in lithium niobate

Abstract

We present the highest, to the best of our knowledge, average power from a laser-driven single-cycle THz source demonstrated so far, using optical rectification in the tilted pulse front geometry in cryogenically cooled lithium niobate, pumped by a commercially available 500 W ultrafast thin-disk ytterbium (Yb) amplifier. We study repetition rate-dependent effects in our setup at 100 and 40 kHz at this high average power, revealing different optimal fluence conditions for efficient conversion. The demonstrated sources with multi-100 mW average power at these high repetition rates combine high THz pulse energies and high repetition rate and are thus ideally suited for nonlinear THz spectroscopy experiments with significantly reduced measurement times. The presented result is a first benchmark for high average power THz time-domain spectroscopy systems for nonlinear spectroscopy, driven by very high average power ultrafast Yb lasers.