Terahertz death ray

Generation of near single-cycle pulses centered at 0.5 THz frequency with up to 10 μJ energy, 100 μW average power, and 5.0 MW peak power was demonstrated by tilting the intensity front of a femtosecond optical pump pulse from a 10 Hz Ti:sapphire laser to match the phonon-polariton phase velocity to the group velocity of the pump pulses in a lithium niobate crystal. THz pulse intensity as high as 10 MW/cm
²
was achieved. The photon conversion efficiency was 45% and the calculated peak electric field strength at the focus of an off-axis parabolic mirror was 600 kV/cm.