Terahertz-induced Kerr effect in amorphous chalcogenide glasses

Zalkovskij, Maksim; Strikwerda, Andrew C.; Iwaszczuk, Krzysztof; Popescu, Aurelian; Săvăstru, D.; Malureanu, Radu; Lavrinenko, Andrei V.; Jepsen, Peter Uhd

doi:10.1063/1.4832825

Cited by 54 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Even though the Kerr coefficient is weaker than in many other media such as liquid, 18 air, 15 and solids, 19,20 diamond has three main advantages for the realization of an ultrafast THz Kerr gate. First, diamond is an insulator with a wide bandgap (E gap = 5.5 eV) which reduces the probability of electron-hole pair generation across the bandgap upon nonlinear excitation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme nonlinear terahertz electro-optics in diamond for ultrafast pulse switching

2017

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Polarization switching of picosecond laser pulses is a fundamental concept in signal processing [C. Chen and G. Liu, Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci. 16, 203 (1986); V. R. Almeida et al., Nature 431, 1081 (2004); and A. A. P. Pohl et al., Photonics Sens. 3, 1 (2013)]. Conventional switching devices rely on the electro-optical Pockels effect and work at radio frequencies. The ensuing gating time of several nanoseconds is a bottleneck for faster switches which is set by the performance of state-of-the-art high-voltage electronics. Here we show that by substituting the electric field of several kV/cm provided by modern electronics by the MV/cm field of a single-cycle THz laser pulse, the electro-optical gating process can be driven orders of magnitude faster, at THz frequencies. In this context, we introduce diamond as an exceptional electro-optical material and demonstrate a pulse gating time as fast as 100 fs using sub-cycle THz-induced Kerr nonlinearity. We show that THz-induced switching in the insulator diamond is fully governed by the THz pulse shape. The presented THz-based electro-optical approach overcomes the bandwidth and switching speed limits of conventional MHz/GHz electronics and establishes the ultrafast electro-optical gating technology for the first time in the THz frequency range. We finally show that the presented THz polarization gating technique is applicable for advanced beam diagnostics. As a first example, we demonstrate tomographic reconstruction of a THz pulse in three dimensions.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme nonlinear terahertz electro-optics in diamond for ultrafast pulse switching

2017

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“…Chalcogenide glass materials have been used as platform for photonic devices due to their high TON refractive index, ultrashort response time (o200 fs) and high infrared transmittance [5][6][7]. Based on these distinct advantages as compared to other infrared optical materials, chalcogenide glasses have been considered as a good candidate for designing and fabricating the key optical communication devices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation of mid-infrared optical nonlinearity of Ge20SnxSe80−x ternary chalcogenide glasses

et al. 2016

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“…With the great development of intense THz sources, it becomes possible to observe third-order nonlinear effects in the THz frequency range. For example, Zalkovskij et al 18 have observed THzinduced optical birefringence in amorphous chalcogenide glasses which are centrosymmetric. It is impossible to observe the THz related Kerr-like effect reported here in amorphous chalcogenide glasses because the χ χ χ (2) of the centrosymmetric material vanishes.…”

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Observation of Kerr nonlinearity and Kerr-like nonlinearity induced by terahertz generation in LiNbO3

Wang

Chun

Wang

et al. 2019

Applied Physics Letters

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Femtosecond laser pulses interacting with LiNbO 3 has been widely applied in intense terahertz generation, excitation and imaging of phonon polaritons and modulating light. It is of great importance to study the nonlinearities induced by femtosecond laser pulses in LiNbO 3 . Here, we demonstrate that both Kerr nonlinearity and Kerr-like nonlinearity induced by terahertz wave occur under the interaction between laser pulses and LiNbO 3 using optical pump-probe techniques. We show that the contribution of Kerr-like nonlinearity to pump-probe spectra varies with the interaction length because of the phase mismatching between terahertz wave and laser pulse. We also observed the excitation of the low frequency phonon polaritons. Experimental results are in consistent with theoretical calculation.

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Terahertz-induced Kerr effect in amorphous chalcogenide glasses

Cited by 54 publications

References 26 publications

Extreme nonlinear terahertz electro-optics in diamond for ultrafast pulse switching

Extreme nonlinear terahertz electro-optics in diamond for ultrafast pulse switching

Investigation of mid-infrared optical nonlinearity of Ge20SnxSe80−x ternary chalcogenide glasses

Observation of Kerr nonlinearity and Kerr-like nonlinearity induced by terahertz generation in LiNbO3

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