Abstract:
Terahertz pulse generation from multiterawatt laser surface plasma near thick solid targets and thin foils has been studied. Pulses with energies up to $7 \mu$J were detected in the spectral region $<3$ THz in the direction of specular reflection from the surface of the CaF$_2$ target. The dependence of the terahertz pulse energy ${{W}_{{{\text{THz}}}}}$ on the laser pulse intensity $I_{L}^{\alpha }$ can be approximated by the power function ${{W}_{{{\text{THz}}}}} \sim I_{L}^{\alpha }$ . For a fixed laser pulse duration and variable energy the power index lies in the range $\alpha \approx 1.5$–$2.8$, while for a fixed energy and variable duration $\alpha \approx 1$.