Active modulation of the terahertz spectra radiated from two air plasmas.

A simple and energy-saving method has been proposed to actively modulate the spectra of terahertz (THz) waves radiated from two serial plasmas, which uses the background light to generate one plasma to make full use of the energy of the femtosecond laser. With this method, the modulation of the central frequency, spectral bandwidth, and spectral profile of the output THz waves have been observed. The shifting of the amplitude dip has been manipulated by changing the distance of the two serial plasmas. The manipulation results agree with the ones simulated by the transition-Cherenkov model. This proposed method provides a useful tool for getting the modulated THz spectra that can be used in the THz remote sensing.