Efficiently Laser Driven Terahertz Surface Plasmon Polaritons on Long Metal Wire
Abstract
We experimentally demonstrate a novel scheme for efficiently generating intense terahertz (THz) surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) on a sub-wavelength-diameter meter-long metal wire. Driven by a subrelativistic femtosecond laser (a0=0.3, 3 mJ) focused at the wire's midpoint, single-cycle ten-megawatt THz SPPs are excited and propagating bidirectionally along it over 25 cm. The measured laser-to-SPPs energy conversion efficiency is reaching up to ~2.4%, which is the highest value at present. It is proved that the THz SPPs are excited by coherent transition radiation of the subrelativistic laser produced escaping electrons. Particle-in-cell together with CST simulations confirm the experimental observations. Our scheme of using readily available subrelativistic laser should thus be useful to applications requiring terawatt level single-cycle THz SPPs.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.08048,
title = {Efficiently Laser Driven Terahertz Surface Plasmon Polaritons on Long Metal Wire},
author = {Shuoting Shao and Xiangbing Wang and Rong Huang and Guangyue Hu and Min Chen and Huibo Tang and Longyu Kuang and Yuxi Liu and Yuqiu Gu and Yongkun Ding and Ruxin Li and Hongbin Zhuo and Mingyang Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.08048},
year = {2025}
}