Heterodyne electro-optic sampling of terahertz waves with divergent probe beam
Abstract
In the terahertz (THz) heterodyne electro-optic (EO) sampling, a spatially distributed EO signal over the cross section of the probe beam is observed corresponding to the difference frequency generation (DFG) and sum frequency generation (SFG). We investigate the efficiency of the heterodyne EO sampling depending on the beam focusing condition to the photo detector. The probe beam is incident on to photo-detectors under the focusing beam or divergent beam condition, and the detection efficiencies of the THz wave are compared in the two conditions. The observed time waveforms show that the EO signal amplitude in the divergent beam condition is four times larger compared to the focusing beam condition.