The deflection of charged particles is an intuitive way to visualize an electromagnetic oscillation of coherent light. Here, we present a real-time ultrafast oscilloscope for time-frozen visualization of a terahertz (THz) optical wave by probing light-driven motion of relativistic electrons. We found the unique condition of subwavelength metal slit waveguide for preserving the distortion-free optical waveform during its propagation. Momentary stamping of the wave, transversely travelling inside a metal slit, on an ultrashort wide electron bunch enables the single-shot recording of an ultrafast optical waveform. As a proof-of-concept experiment, we successfully demonstrated to capture the entire field oscillation of a THz pulse with a sampling rate of 75.7 TS/s. Owing to the use of transversely-wide and longitudinally-short electron bunch and transversely travelling wave, the proposed “single-shot oscilloscope” will open up new avenue for developing the real-time petahertz (PHz) metrology.
CITATION STYLE
Baek, I. H., Kim, H. W., Bark, H. S., Jang, K. H., Park, S., Shin, J., … Jeong, Y. U. (2021). Real-time ultrafast oscilloscope with a relativistic electron bunch train. Nature Communications, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27256-x
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