Terahertz emission from a plasma dipole oscillation

We studied an unrevealed characteristic of radiation emission from a localized plasma oscillator (plasma dipole oscillation—PDO). PDO is a novel concept of generating terahertz emission from a laser plasma-based system. The electromagnetic field generated by a PDO embedded in a uniform plasma, instead of being cut off by the ambient plasma as expected by a common but misleading sense, propagates long distances to escape the plasma eventually. The PDO-THz, differently from other laser plasma-based THz sources, utilizes the collective behavior of the plasma (plasma oscillations) and, accordingly, produces a quasi-narrow-band emission, which can potentially be useful in THz-based accelerator or THz-pump and probe experiments. We verified the PDO mechanism by using realistic three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.