Towards gigawatt terahertz emission by few-cycle laser pulses

It is shown by analysis and simulations that an extremely powerful terahertz (THz) radiation can be produced by a few-cycle laser pulse in a tenuous plasma. The THz amplitude scales linearly with the laser amplitude as well as with the sine of the laser carrier-envelope phase, and in particular, it increases exponentially with the decrease of the laser duration. For example, the THz amplitude increases by near 2 orders of magnitude as the laser duration decreases from one and a half cycles to one cycle; a single-cycle laser of 200 TW can drive the THz radiation of 1 GW with the energy conversion efficiency higher than 10−4.