TY - JOUR
T1 - Semiconductor saturable absorbers for ultrafast terahertz signals
AU - Hoffmann, Matthias C.
AU - Turchinovich, Dmitry
N1 - Copyright (2010) American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - We demonstrate saturable absorber behavior of n-type semiconductors GaAs, GaP, and Ge in the terahertz THz frequency range at room temperature using nonlinear THz spectroscopy. The saturation mechanism is based on a decrease in electron conductivity of semiconductors at high
electron momentum states, due to conduction band onparabolicity and scattering into satellite valleys in strong THz fields. Saturable absorber parameters, such as linear and nonsaturable transmission, and saturation fluence, are extracted by fits to a classic saturable absorber model. Further, we observe THz pulse shortening, and an increase in the group refractive index of the samples at higher THz pulse peak fields.
AB - We demonstrate saturable absorber behavior of n-type semiconductors GaAs, GaP, and Ge in the terahertz THz frequency range at room temperature using nonlinear THz spectroscopy. The saturation mechanism is based on a decrease in electron conductivity of semiconductors at high
electron momentum states, due to conduction band onparabolicity and scattering into satellite valleys in strong THz fields. Saturable absorber parameters, such as linear and nonsaturable transmission, and saturation fluence, are extracted by fits to a classic saturable absorber model. Further, we observe THz pulse shortening, and an increase in the group refractive index of the samples at higher THz pulse peak fields.
U2 - 10.1063/13386542
DO - 10.1063/13386542
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0003-6951
VL - 96
JO - Applied Physics Letters
JF - Applied Physics Letters
IS - 15
M1 - 151110
ER -