title: Highly efficient optical-to-terahertz conversion in a sandwich structure with LiNbO3 core.
abstract: We demonstrate experimentally the efficiency of a recently proposed scheme of terahertz generation based on Cherenkov emission from ultrashort laser pulses in a sandwich structure. The structure has a thin nonlinear core covered with a prism of low terahertz absorption. Using an 8 mm long Si-LiNbO(3)-BK7 structure with a 50 microm thick LiNbO(3) core, we converted 40 microJ, 50 fs Ti:sapphire laser pulses into terahertz pulses of approximately 3 THz bandwidth with a record efficiency of over 0.1%.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. bosbor@ufp.appl.sci-nnov.ru
authors.forename: S B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Bodrov
authors.forename: A N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Stepanov
authors.forename: M I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Bakunov
authors.forename: B V
authors.initials: BV
authors.lastname: Shishkin
authors.forename: I E
authors.initials: IE
authors.lastname: Ilyakov
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Akhmedzhanov