Local Terahertz Field Enhancement for Time-Resolved X-ray Diffraction

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that patterning samples with gold microstructures can significantly enhance local terahertz fields, leading to increased x-ray diffraction signals in ultrafast experiments without degrading data quality.

Contribution

It introduces a method to locally enhance terahertz fields using microstructures, improving the sensitivity of time-resolved x-ray diffraction measurements.

Findings

Five-fold increase in THz-induced diffraction signal with microstructures

Microstructures do not alter THz pulse shape or diffraction quality

Enhanced local fields improve ultrafast x-ray diffraction sensitivity

Abstract

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.