Mechanism of relativistic Doppler reflection from a photoinduced moving plasma front studied by terahertz time-domain spectroscopy

We applied terahertz (THz) time-domain spectroscopy to reveal the mechanism of the relativistic Doppler reflection of THz light from a photoinduced plasma front in a silicon wafer. The frequency upshift caused by the Doppler reflection was identified by measurement of the reflected THz waveforms and compared to the calculated results obtained using the one-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. The relation between the energy density of the pump light and the frequency upshift was also explored. We found that the interaction time of the moving plasma front and the reflected THz pulse is a key factor in understanding the mechanism of the relativistic Doppler reflection.