Tunable Fully Absorbing Metasurfaces for Efficient THz Detection

• Published in: 2020 45th International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves (IRMMW-THz) pp. 1 - 2
• Main Authors: Hale, Lucy L., Vabischevich, Polina P., Siday, Tom, Harris, Charles Thomas, Reno, John L., Brener, Igal, Mitrofanov, Oleg
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 08-11-2020
• Subjects: Metasurfaces; Optical design; Optical detectors; Photonic band gap; Plasmons; Stimulated emission; Systematics
• ISSN: 2162-2035
• DOI: 10.1109/IRMMW-THz46771.2020.9370395

Terahertz photoconductive antennas with a nanostructured active region have been actively investigated recently with a goal to achieve high efficiency THz detectors and emitters. Here we provide a novel design of perfectly-absorbing photoconductive region without plasmonic elements using a metasurface, and provide a systematic method by which the metasurface can be designed to work optimally for varying optical gate frequencies across the GaAs band-gap. This paves the way to using metasurface devices for THz detection and other applications in a wide range of laser systems operating at different wavelengths or with different photoconductive materials.