Local terahertz field enhancement for time-resolved x-ray diffraction

We report local field strength enhancement of single-cycle terahertz (THz) pulses in an ultrafast time-resolved x-ray diffraction experiment. We show that patterning the sample with gold microstructures increases the THz field without changing the THz pulse shape or drastically affecting the quality of the x-ray diffraction pattern. We find a five-fold increase in THz-induced x-ray diffraction intensity change in the presence of microstructures on a SrTiO3 thin-film sample.