Scalable high-repetition-rate sub-half-cycle terahertz pulses from spatially indirect interband transitions

Christian Meineke; Michael Prager; Johannes Hayes; Qiannan Wen; Lukas Zheyi Kastner; Dieter Schuh; Kilian Fritsch; Oleg Pronin; Markus Stein; Felix Schäfer; Sangam Chatterjee; Mackillo Kira; Rupert Huber; Dominique Bougeard

doi:10.1038/s41377-022-00824-6

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Scalable high-repetition-rate sub-half-cycle terahertz pulses from spatially indirect interband transitions

Articles

- Scalable high-repetition-rate sub-half-cycle terahertz pulses from spatially indirect interband transitions
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 11, Issue 6, Pages: 1304-1311(2022)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.Department of Physics, University of Regensburg 93040 Regensburg, Germany
  2.Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
  3.Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Helmut Schmidt University, 22043 Hamburg, Germany
  4.Institute of Experimental Physics I, Justus Liebig University Giessen 35392 Giessen, Germany
- Author bio：
  
  Mackillo Kira (mackkira@umich.edu)
  Rupert Huber (rupert.huber@ur.de)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-022-00824-6
  CLC：
- Published：30 June 2022，
  
  Published Online：23 May 2022，
  
  Received：22 December 2021，
  
  Revised：21 April 2022，
  
  Accepted：27 April 2022
- Accepted：
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Meineke, C. et al. Scalable high-repetition-rate sub-half-cycle terahertz pulses from spatially indirect interband transitions. Light: Science & Applications, 11, 1304-1311 (2022).
DOI：

Meineke, C. et al. Scalable high-repetition-rate sub-half-cycle terahertz pulses from spatially indirect interband transitions. Light: Science & Applications, 11, 1304-1311 (2022). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-022-00824-6.

摘要

Abstract

Intense phase-locked terahertz (THz) pulses are the bedrock of THz lightwave electronics

where the carrier field creates a transient bias to control electrons on sub-cycle time scales. Key applications such as THz scanning tunnelling microscopy or electronic devices operat

ing at optical clock rates call for ultimately short

almost unipolar waveforms

at megahertz (MHz) repetition rates. Here

we present a flexible and scalable scheme for the generation of strong phase-locked THz pulses based on shift currents in type-Ⅱ-aligned epitaxial semiconductor heterostructures. The measured THz waveforms exhibit only 0.45 optical cycles at their centre frequency within the full width at half maximum of the intensity envelope

peak fields above 1.1 kV cm

−1

and spectral components up to the mid-infrared

at a repetition rate of 4 MHz. The only positive half-cycle of this waveform exceeds all negative half-cycles by almost four times

which is unexpected from shift currents alone. Our detailed analysis reveals that local charging dynamics induces the pronounced positive THz-emission peak as electrons and holes approach charge neutrality after separation by the optical pump pulse

also enabling ultrabroadband operation. Our unipolar emitters mark a milestone for flexibly scalable

next-generation high-repetition-rate sources of intense and strongly asymmetric electric field transients.

关键词

Keywords

references

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