Generation and detection of picosecond far-infrared radiation

William Michael Dennis; Sean J. Kirkpatrick

doi:10.1117/12.181343

27 July 1994 Generation and detection of picosecond far-infrared radiation

William Michael Dennis, Sean J. Kirkpatrick

Proceedings Volume 2138, Longer Wavelength Lasers and Applications; (1994) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.181343
Event: OE/LASE '94, 1994, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Abstract

We discuss the generation of ultrashort far infrared (FIR) pulses using external switching of the output of a FIR superradiant cell pumped by a transversely excited atmospheric CO₂ laser. The external switching mechanism consists of either one or two semiconducting wafers that have been optically excited with the second harmonic of a synchronized modelocked YAG:Nd³⁺ laser. The output of our FIR superradiant cell, a 50 ns FIR pulse is incident at Brewsters angle on a semiconducting wafer. On optical excitation above the band gap the (FIR) transmitting semiconductor takes on a metallic reflectance and the FIR transmission of the wafer is switched. If silicon is used as the switching medium, the long relaxation time requires that two wafers are used, one to turn on the pulse, and the second to turn it off. Using a pair of intrinsic silicon wafers the FIr pulse width can be adjusted with the ultimate limit being of the order of the width of the picosecond optical laser.

Citation Download Citation

William Michael Dennis and Sean J. Kirkpatrick "Generation and detection of picosecond far-infrared radiation", Proc. SPIE 2138, Longer Wavelength Lasers and Applications, (27 July 1994); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.181343

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KEYWORDS

Far infrared

Phonons

Semiconducting wafers

Picosecond phenomena

Silicon

Switching

Wafer-level optics

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