Optical and Terahertz Power Limits in the Low-Temperature-Grown GaAs Photomixers
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-10-1997
Identifier/URL
43035248 (Pure)
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Abstract
Optical heterodyne conversion, or photomixing, occurs in an epitaxial low-temperature-grown GaAs layer with voltage-biased metal electrodes on which two laser beams are focused with their frequencies offset by a desired difference frequency. Difference-frequency power couples out of the photomixer through a log-spiral antenna at THz frequencies. Pumping such a device with the maximum optical power of ∼90 mW at 77 K led to a measured output power of 0.2 μW at 2.5 THz, approximately twice the maximum output power of a photomixer operated near 300 K. Photomixers that were operated above the maximum optical power were destroyed, often because of a thermally induced fracture in the GaAs substrate. The fracture seemed to occur at high pump power when the temperature of the photomixer active area was elevated by roughly 110 K, independent of the bath temperature.
Repository Citation
Verghese, S.,
McIntosh, K. A.,
& Brown, E. R.
(1997). Optical and Terahertz Power Limits in the Low-Temperature-Grown GaAs Photomixers. Applied Physics Letters, 71 (19), 2743-2745.
https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/physics/1374
DOI
10.1063/1.120445
