We report an improved theoretical model to characterize terahertz electro-optic （F,O） sampling detection operating at near crossed-polarizer design by considering the nonzero minimal transmission of polarizers and the polarization purity of laser beam. The proof-of-concept experiments show that the model can give quiet reasonable explanations on many experimental phenomena in THz EO detection, e.g. the modulation depth vs the different optical biases, the noise level from the balance detector vs the input probe beam power, the main origin of the background light and the incomplete cancellation of noise from the laser intensity fluctuation in balanced detection. The terahertz signals and the noises are also measured based on two different EO sampling schemes for comparison. The measured results support our model very well.
We present our experimental studies on the effects of the pumping sizes on THz radiation based on ultrashort light pulse optical rectification for high spatial resolution T-Ray imaging. Our experiments show that high spatial resolution T-ray imaging requires both thin THz emitter and sample, and rigorous tolerance of the gap between the sample and the emitter, as well as small pumping size which usually much smaller compared with THz wavelength. Such a small pumping size results in dramatic decrease of the THz wave power, which originates from strong diffraction of THz wave, the depolarization of the focused tightly pumping beam, the spatial filtering of the emitter exit-surface, and the strong phase-mismatching between the pumping and the high spatial Fourier components of the THz signal, rather than two-photon absorption.
We present a simple and compact design for an all-solid-state laser amplifier system which can output 9.43-kHz 630-ps, 3.5-W pulse trains under 20 W absorbed pumping power. The excellent matching between the repetition of its seed source and the fluorescence lifetime of the amplifying medium makes it quiet efficient for the four-pass amplifier to be pumped in cw mode without need of any synchronization device between the oscillator and the amplifier. The entire setup just covers an area of 55 × 25 cm^2. The output average power fluctuation is less than ±1.5% within 10min and 3% within 6h.
