Terahertz Pulse Generation from GaAs Metasurfaces
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Ultrafast optical excitation of select materials gives rise to the generation of broadband terahertz (THz) pulses. This effect has enabled the field of THz time-domain spectroscopy and led to the discovery of many physical mechanisms behind THz generation. However, only a few materials possess the required properties to generate THz radiation efficiently. Optical metasurfaces can relax stringent material requirements by shifting the focus onto the engineering of local electromagnetic fields to boost THz generation. Here we demonstrate the generation of THz pulses in a 160 nm thick nanostructured GaAs metasurface. Despite the drastically reduced volume, the metasurface emits THz radiation with efficiency comparable to that of a thick GaAs crystal. We reveal that along with classical second-order volume nonlinearity, an additional mechanism contributes strongly to THz generation in the metasurface, which we attribute to surface nonlinearity. Our results lay the foundation for engineering of semiconductor metasurfaces for efficient and versatile THz radiation emitters.
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Enhanced THz emission observed in dielectric metasurfaces made of GaAs and InAs reveals a significant role of surface and bulk second-order nonlinearities instead of drift currents caused by the surface field or carrier gradient (photo-Dember effect) present in bulk crystals.
“Enhanced THz emission was also observed in dielectric metasurfaces made of GaAs and InAs216,217, revealing the significant role of surface and bulk second-order nonlinearities instead of drift currents caused by the surface field or carrier gradient (photo-Dember effect) present in bulk crystals.”
From Ultrafast terahertz emission from emerging symmetry-broken materials (2023) · cites this paper as [217]
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Ultrafast terahertz emission from emerging symmetry-broken materials
Pettine, J., Padmanabhan, P., Sirica, N., Prasankumar, R. P., Taylor, A. J., & Chen, H.-T. (2023) · Light: Science & Applications · doi:10.1038/s41377-023-01163-w · Cited by 81 · see citing works
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Hale, L. L., Jung, H., Gennaro, S. D., Briscoe, J., Harris, C. T., Luk, T. S., Addamane, S. J., Reno, J. L., Brener, I., & Mitrofanov, O.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Sandia National Laboratories (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hale, Lucy L.
- ORCID
- Venue
- ACS Photonics
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2022-03-29
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1136-1142
- ISSN
- 2330-4022 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9097576
- OpenAlex
- W4221013498
- Cited by
- 50
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 4
- FWCI
- 3.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- ACS Photonics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L015455/1, EP/P021859/1, EP/T517793/1)
- Basic Energy Sciences
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Terahertz technology and applications
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials › Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications
- Keywords
- terahertz pulse generation, optical metasurfaces, semiconductor metasurfaces, second-order nonlinear optics, ultrafast laser excitation
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