The present paper studies the generation mechanism of terahertz (THz) radiation from tightly focused femtosecond laser pulses in a gas medium. We measured the angular radiation pattern under different focusing conditions and observed that, with the deepening of focus, the angular radiation pattern changes and optical-to-THz conversion efficiency increases. The analysis of the observed phenomena led to the assumption that the dipole radiation prevails in most cases despite the existing conception regarding the dominating role of the quadrupole mechanism of radiation. Based on these assumptions, the transient photocurrent theory of the phenomenon presented in this paper was developed by us and used for the numerical fit of the experimental data.

The ways to improve the efficiency of electromagnetic waves generation in laboratory experiments with high-current relativistic electron beams injected into a magnetized plasma are discussed. It is known that such a beam can lose, in a plasma, a significant part of its energy by exciting a high level of turbulence and heating plasma electrons. Beam-excited plasma oscillations may simultaneously participate in nonlinear processes resulting in a fundamental and second harmonic emissions. It is obvious, however, that in the developed plasma turbulence the role of these emissions in the total energy balance is always negligible. In this paper, we investigate whether electromagnetic radiation generated in the beam-plasma system can be sufficiently enhanced by the direct linear conversion of resonant beam-driven modes into electromagnetic ones on preformed regular inhomogeneities of plasma density. Due to the high power of relativistic electron beams, the mechanism discussed may become the basis for the generator of powerful sub-terahertz radiation.

The power of electromagnetic emission near the plasma frequency during collective electron beam-plasma interaction is found to be significantly increased in a plasma with preformed large-amplitude density perturbations. Laboratory experiments at the GOL-PET facility show that injection of a kiloampere relativistic electron beam into a magnetized plasma with strong radial density gradients is accompanied with an order of magnitude more intense generation of sub-millimeter waves than in the case of smooth density profile. As a possible mechanism for the enhanced generation of the longitudinal radiation flux observed in these experiments, we discuss the direct beam pumping of longitudinally propagating electromagnetic plasma modes due to their coupling with the Doppler shifted beam branch in the presence of oblique modulation of plasma density.

It is found that nonlinear interaction of plasma wakefields driven by counterpropagating laser or particle beams can efficiently generate high-power electromagnetic radiation at the second harmonic of the plasma frequency. Using a simple analytical theory and particle-in-cell simulations, we show that this phenomenon can be attractive for producing high-field ($\sim 10$ MV/cm) tunable terahertz radiation with a narrow line width. For laser drivers produced by existing petawatt-class systems, this nonlinear process opens the way to the generation of gigawatt, multi-millijoule terahertz pulses which are not presently available for any other generating schemes.

In this paper we study how efficiently electromagnetic radiation can be generated by a relativistic electron beam with a gigawatt power level during its injection into a thin magnetized plasma. It is shown that, if the transverse beam and plasma size is compared with the radiation wavelength and the plasma density is modulated along the magnetic field, such a beam–plasma system can radiate electromagnetic waves via the antenna mechanism. We propose a theoretical model describing generation of electromagnetic waves by this plasma antenna and calculate its main radiation characteristics. In the two-dimensional case theoretical predictions on the radiation efficiency are shown to be confirmed by the results of particle-in-cell simulations, and the three-dimensional variant of this theory is used to estimate the peak power of sub-terahertz radiation that can be achieved in beam–plasma experiments in mirror traps.

In this paper, electromagnetic emissions produced in a thin beam-plasma system are studied using two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. For the first time, the problem of emission generation in such a system is considered in a realistic formulation allowing for the continuous injection of a relativistic electron beam through a plasma boundary. Specific attention is given to the thin plasma case in which the transverse plasma size is comparable to the typical wavelength of beam-driven oscillations. Such a case is often implemented in laboratory beam-plasma experiments and has a number of peculiarities. Emission from a thin plasma does not require intermediate generation of the electromagnetic plasma eigenmodes, as in an infinite case, and is more similar to the regular antenna radiation. In this work, we determine how efficiently the fundamental and the second harmonic emissions can be generated in previously modulated and initially homogeneous plasmas.