Air-photonics terahertz platform with versatile micro-controller based interface and data acquisition

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile air-photonics terahertz platform utilizing an air plasma source and micro-controller based data acquisition, enabling broadband terahertz generation, detection, and spectroscopy with high agreement to simulations.

Contribution

The work presents a novel terahertz platform combining air plasma sources with micro-controller based detection, enhancing versatility and integration for spectroscopy applications.

Findings

Successful generation of broadband terahertz pulses in the MV/cm range

Accurate detection of terahertz electric fields using micro-controller based system

Effective spectroscopy demonstrated on water vapor and polystyrene samples

Abstract

We present a recently developed terahertz platform. An air plasma produced by an ultrashort two-color laser pulse serves as a broadband terahertz source, with electric field that has peak amplitude in the MV/cm range. Air biased coherent detection of the terahertz field is employed where a peak detector associated with a micro-controller board acquires the signal coming from an avalanche photodiode. The temporal and spectral profiles of the produced terahertz electric field are presented, in excellent agreement with numerical simulations of the whole setup. We illustrate the capabilities of this platform by performing spectroscopy on water vapor and of a polystyrene reference sample.