We report temporal shaping of few-cycle terahertz pulses, using a slit
in a conductive screen as a high-pass filter. The filter's cutoff fre
quency was tuned by changing the width of the slit; the slope of the c
utoff transition was altered by changing the thickness of the screen.
We measured the transmission function of the filters, using large-aper
ture photoconducting antennas to create and detect the incident and tr
ansmitted electric field. Our experimental results were in excellent a
greement with the performed finite-difference time-domain simulations
of the propagation of the pulse through the slit. When the screen thic
kness was greater than the slit width, the filter was well modeled by
a short, planar waveguide. Using a simple transfer function, we accura
tely describe the sharp cutoff and dispersion of such a filter. (C) 19
97 Optical Society of America.