Marion Cornet

Terahertz Kerr effect in gallium phosphide crystal

We report on the observation of Kerr effect induced by an intense terahertz pulse in a (100) Gallium Phosphide crystal. The temporal and angular behaviors of the phase retardation have been measured and agree well with theoretical predictions. From these measurements, we extracted the nonzero tensor elements of the third-order response function of the crystal in the terahertz range.

Terahertz-field-induced second harmonic generation through Pockels effect in zinc telluride crystal

We report on the second harmonic generation of a near-infrared pulse in a Zinc Telluride (ZnTe) crystal through the Pockels effect induced by an intense terahertz pulse, demonstrating cascading second-order nonlinear phenomena in the terahertz range.

Frequency resolved cross-correlation between optical and terahertz pulses: application to ultrashort laser pulse characterization.

We have analyzed both theoretically and experimentally the spectrum of the optical pulses produced by the interaction of optical and THz pulses in a ZnTe crystal. Recorded as a function of the delay between the two pulses, the resulting spectrogram can be viewed as a frequency resolved cross-correlation between the optical and THz pulses making it possible to characterize the optical pulse.

Simple and distortion-free optical sampling of terahertz pulses via heterodyne detection schemes

We present and demonstrate experimentally two simple and distortion-free methods to sample terahertz pulse in zinc-blende-type crystals like ZnTe or GaP. They are based on an optical heterodyne detection scheme which makes it possible to measure the terahertz field by detecting the optical probe beam or its second harmonic. Both are compared to conventional electro-optic sampling and give results in good agreement with the latter.