Music goes terahertz: Scientists achieve breakthrough for pulsed terahertz lasers

Nanowerk  August 27, 2020
If ultrashort pulses could be directly generated in quantum cascade lasers terahertz radiation could be used for many more applications. An international team of researchers (Germany, Italy, UK) has developed a new class of saturable absorbers operating at much lower saturation intensities to change the ultrashort pulses generated in quantum cascade lasers into pulsed operation. They designed a microstructured assembly of a gold mirror and a gold grating that jointly work like a resonating body for terahertz radiation. The strong coupling between the electrons and the terahertz microcavity results in an excitation that is half electron, half terahertz photon. In demonstrations the absorber was not only much easier to saturate than the electronic transition by approximately an order of magnitude and saturates faster than a single oscillation cycle of the terahertz pulse…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE