Temporal and Spectral Properties of Subcycle THz Pulses in Near-Field Zone

In a novel generation and detection configuration of terahertz (THz) radiation, we investigate experimentally and numerically the properties of sub-cycle THz pulses in the near field. It is found that the sub-cycle THz pulses experience significant spectral and temporal deformation in the near-field zone. The variations of both the pulse waveform and spectral distribution of the THz electric field are clearly observed in our experiments when the spot size of source is changed. Numerical simulations based on Gaussian distribution are performed to explain the details of the data and lead to an excellent agreement with the experimental results.