Enhanced high field terahertz emission from plasma wakefields via pulse sharpening by a foil shutter

A dual-stage scheme is proposed to generate terahertz (THz) pulses with an extremely high field strength that is in the GV/cm regime from laser-driven plasma wakefields. A thin foil target is employed to act as an optical shutter to sharpen the laser pulse front based on the mechanism of relativistic transparency. The shaped laser pulse then interacts with gaseous density plasmas to generate THz pulses via excitation of net residual transverse currents. Compared to the case of without the foil shutter, THz field strength can be notably enhanced by one order of magnitude. The scheme is numerically demonstrated through one and two dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.