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Terahertz laser frequency combs

Nature Photonics volume 8, pages 462–467 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Terahertz light can be used to identify numerous complex molecules, but has traditionally remained unexploited due to the lack of powerful broadband sources. Pulsed lasers can be used to generate broadband radiation, but such sources are bulky and produce only microwatts of average power. Conversely, although terahertz quantum cascade lasers are compact semiconductor sources of high-power terahertz radiation, their narrowband emission makes them unsuitable for complex spectroscopy. In this work, we demonstrate frequency combs based on terahertz quantum cascade lasers, which combine the high power of lasers with the broadband capabilities of pulsed sources. By fully exploiting the quantum-mechanically broadened gain spectrum available to these lasers, we can generate 5 mW of terahertz power spread across 70 laser lines. This radiation is sufficiently powerful to be detected by Schottky-diode mixers, and will lead to compact terahertz spectrometers.

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Figure 1: GVD of laser gain medium.
Figure 2: Continuous-wave spectrum and beat notes.
Figure 3: Results of SWIFT measurement.
Figure 4: Bias dependence of beat-note and SWIFT spectra.
Figure 5: Heterodyne beat note between single-mode laser and comb.

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Acknowledgements

The work at MIT was supported by NASA and the NSF. The work in the Netherlands was supported by NWO, NATO SFP and RadioNet. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences user facility. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-programme laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (contract no. DE-AC04-94AL85000). The authors thank D. Levonian for his help in setting up the FTIR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    David Burghoff, Tsung-Yu Kao, Ningren Han, Chun Wang Ivan Chan, Xiaowei Cai, Yang Yang & Qing Hu

  2. SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Groningen, 9747 AD, The Netherlands

    Darren J. Hayton & Jian-Rong Gao

  3. Kavli Institute of NanoScience, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands

    Jian-Rong Gao

  4. Center for Integrated Nanotechnology, Sandia National Laboratories, 87123, New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA

    John L. Reno

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  1. David Burghoff
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Contributions

D.B. conceived the strategy, designed the devices, performed the measurements and completed the analysis. D.B. and N.H. performed electromagnetic simulations. T.-Y.K., N.H. and C.W.I.C. fabricated the devices. D.B., X.C. and Y.Y. performed the heterodyne beat-note measurements. D.J.H. and J.-R.G. provided the hot electron bolometer mixer. J.L.R. provided the material growth. All work was performed under the supervision of Q.H.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Burghoff.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Burghoff, D., Kao, TY., Han, N. et al. Terahertz laser frequency combs. Nature Photon 8, 462–467 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.85

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