Table-Top THz Pulses via Large-Area Photoconductive Antennas

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: THz pulses have a variety of applications in atomic and molecular physics. As molecular probes, they are broadband excitation pulses to study dynamics on a unique time scale. This time scale (on the order of picoseconds) is associated with the "THz gap," or the regime in the electromagnetic spectrum previously difficult to create due to the gap between electronic frequencies and optical frequencies. Given this technological gap, THz pulses pose many engineering challenges for table-top generation. Photoconductive switches offer an elegant solution to this challenge. They take advantage of the time scale associated with charge carrier dynamics in certain semiconductor materials to generate radiation in the THz regime. These devices are triggered by laser pulses, and the majority of their radiative energy is stored in a bias field applied to the semiconductor material itself. Their power is also derived from the area of semiconductor that is triggered. Hence, these devices are easily scalable from a theoretical point of view. We have developed a large-area array of photoconductive antennas for generating high-field, broadband THz pulses in such applications. The device is a 50 cm^2 patterned array of interdigitated leads on GaAs driven by a 50 fs pulse of IR light. We also report improvements for fabrication and experimental setup using the antenna array.

Type of resource	text
Date created	June 10, 2015

Author	Garland, Rex
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Physics
Primary advisor	Bucksbaum, Phil
Advisor	Kasevich, Mark

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/rv868rt9738

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Garland, Rex. (2015). Table-Top THz Pulses via Large-Area Photoconductive Antennas. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/rv868rt9738

Undergraduate Theses, Department of Physics

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