Detection of THz waves by GaAs photoconductive antennas excited at 1560

nm with tight focusing

Yutaka Kadoya, Keisuke Kajikawa, Takeshi Kataoka and Jiro Kitagawa
Department of Quantum Matter, Hiroshima University, 1-3-1 Kagamiyama, Higashihiroshima 739-8530, Japan
E-mail: kd@hiroshima-u.acjp
.DSll0Cl
We investigated the use of low-temperature-grown (TG) GaAs photoconductive antenna (eA) excited at
1560 nm for the detection of terahertz ( pulses. The decrease in the excitation spot size with a peA of
properly reduced gap length was found to be efcient to enhance the signal intensit. With a spot size of Z./ /
exciting a 1.5 fm gap peA, the amplitude of the detected ! wave is an order of magnitude larger than that
obtained in conventional 5 fm gap peAs. The enhancement of the signal intensit by the reduction of the spot
size stems mostly from the super-linear response of the LTG-GaAs excited at 1560 nm. The results suggest that
the present scheme is ver useful in fber laser based time domain THz systems.
. INTRODUCTION
Most of the terahertz (THz) time domain
systems developed recently utilizes mode-locked
fber lasers because of the compactness and stability.
In these systems, however, the laser output is up
converted to the wavelength around 800 n. Direct
use of the laser output at 1.5 !m is expected for the
simplifcation of the system confguration,
particularly i the system using optical fbers for the
delivery of the excitation pulses to the feely
movable THz emitter and detector. In this work, we
focus on the detector of the THz pulses for such
purposes. Though InGaAs-based photoconductive
antennas (PCA) have been investigated [1-3], it is
necessary to continue a search for a better candidate.
In this work, we revisit low-temperature-grown
(LTG) GaAs PCA. Because the response of the LTG
GaAs PCA excited at 1.5 !m is about an order of
magnitude lower than that excited around 800 nm,
there have been a limited number of reports on the
use of LTG GaAs for 1.5 !m excitation[4,5].
However, since the response is super-linear to the
excitation power[4,5], we can expect a higher
response by focusing tightly the excitation. We found
that, by reducing the spot size of the excitation, the
response of the PCA can be enhanced by an order of
magnitude. As a result, a good signal to noise ratio
(>50 dB) can be obtained with a standard
measurement condition; 10 m W excitation at 1560
n and 10 msec lock-in time constant.
Z. ANTENNA FABRICATION AND
MEASUREMENT SETUP
Conventional dipole-type PCAs of various gap
length ranging fom 10 !m to 1.5 !m were fabricated
on a LTG GaAs substrate. The width of the dipole
was set to be the same as the gap length so that the
gap is square in shape. In order to avoid the variation
of the wafer characteristics, we used only a single
wafer.
The measurements of the THz waves were
carried out in a conventional time domain setup using
a mode-locked fber laser (IMURA, B-200). As the
emitter of the THz waves, we used another LTG
GaAs PCA excited at 780 n. The excitation power
and the dc bias were kept to be 5 mW and 30 N,
respectively. In the detector side, the various spot
sizes were realized by using several objective lenses.
We assumed that, for each combination of the PCA
and the objective lens, the highest THz signal is
obtained with the minimum spot size of the
excitation, which was measured separately by the
knife-edge method. In the following, the laser power
incident on the PCA will be not before but afer the
objective lens because the power loss of the incident
pulses in the lens is not the same.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 1 shows the observed time domain traces
of the THz waves for three different combinations of
the dipole gap length and the excitation spot sizes.
The incident power to the detector was 9.5 mW for
all the cases. The signals were obtained with a lock
in time constant of 10 msec. The peak to peak
amplitude in the 1.5 !m gap PCA with the 2.1 !m
spot is more than 6 times larger then that in the
conventional 5 !m gap PCA. Hence, the beneft of
tight focusing of the excitation pulses combined with
the reduced gap length of the PCA is obvious.
Shown in Fig. 2 are the amplitude spectra of the
pulses shown in Fig. 1. In this fgure, the traces were
not shifed so that one can compare the spectra
directly. Again, the enhancement of the THz spectra
is obviously observed. Note that the spectral shape is
not affected by the present scheme. The peak to noise
ratio of more than 50 dB is realized.
Z
LOUU, O.4UU
I
9.5mW I

\
:
LOUH

~J

c
O ~Z
J
~O
~4
LJ.OUU, Z.JUU
J Z O
Time [psec]
Fig, 1. Time domain traces of the detected THz
signals. The traces were vertically and horizontally
shifed for clarity. G and S denote the gap length and
the spot diameter, respectively,
:

O
T

c
~
1

1
'
LOUU
1
O.4UU
9.5mW
1

Z O4 O
Frequency [THz]
Fig. 2. Amplitude spectra of the THz pulses shown in
Fig. 1. The traces were not shifed.
Figure 3 shows the peak-to-peak amplitude
of the observed THz pulses as a fnction of the
incident power to the detector PCA for the three
combinations of the gap-length and the spot size. The
amplitude increases as !, which is consistent to
the previous reports[5]. / important point is that the
super-linearity is hold even if the spot size is reduced
to 2.1 1m.
Here, let us discuss the spot area dependence of
the THz signal. The current signal obtained in the
measurement may be expressed as
J o nWDETHz o (r WDETHz, (1)
where W, D, ETH" 1 and are the width of the
current region, thickness of the LTG layer, electric
feld induced by the THz wave across the gap,
excitation power, and the area of the excitation,
respectively, and the photo-carrier density n was
assumed to be nonlinear as suggested by the
nonlinear increase of the signal to the incident power.
One may assume that the width of the current region
is determined by the spot diameter, which may by
:

O
C
.

m 1
C
m
3
~
1
'

'

'

J J J 1
Power [mW
Fig. 3. Incident power dependence of the
detectedTHz amplitude
LJ.OUU, Z.JUU
LOUU, O.OUU
J LOUU, O.4UU
c
pe=-1.5 C
m
3
|
LJUU, J.OUU
Fig. 4. Relation between the THz signal and the spot
size.
justifed for the spot size not much different fom the
geometrical width of the gap. For a given 1 and ETH"
one may expect that the signal divided by the width
is proportional to Figure 4 shows such a plot.
The experimental values are ftted with a value of
m=1.5. Though the value seems to be consistent on
frst sight to the values m=1.3 1.4 obtained in the
power dependence of the signal amplitude, we
suspect that the assumption of the constant ETHz for
different PCA gap is not correct. According to the
antenna theory, not the electric fled but the voltage
is determined in an open gap of the linear antenna for
a given incident feld. Therefore, ETHz can be higher
for shorter gap length, which leads to the larger value
of m in the plot as shown in Fig. 4. In the conference,
we will discuss the possibility of enhancing ETHz in a
short gap PCA.
Finally, we show the case of 2.7 1m spot size
for the 1.5 1m gap PCA. Depicted in Fig. 5 are the
time domain signal and the amplitude spectra of the
obtained THz pulses. For comparison, the results
obtained in the 5 1m gap PCA were replotted in the
Figure. The peak to peak amplitude is an order of
magnitude larger in the 2.7 1m spot case with
negligible change in the spectral shape compared
with the 5 1m gap PCA. However, the signal to noise
Z
1
L~OUU, ~O.4UU
--
~O
-4

9.5mW
G=15um, Z.UH
1 Z
Time [psec]
L1.OUU
Z.1UH
1

U Z O 4 O
Frequency [THz]
Fig. 5. Time domain traces and the amplitude spectra
obtained in the 1.5 fm gap PCA with 2.7 fm
excitation spot diameter.
ratio seen in the spectra is again about 50 dB,
because of the increase of the noise foor. Though the
source of the noise is not clear at present, we may
reduce the noise level by frther optimization of the
device and the setup, by which we would achieve the
signal to noise ratio higher than 60 dB.
+. Conclusion
In the present work, we investigated the
detection of THz waved by L TO OaAs PCA with 1.5
fm excitation. By focusing tightly the excitation
pulses down to 2.7 fm and using the PCA of 1.5 fm
gap length, the signal intensity was enhanced by a
factor of 10 fom the value obtained in the
conventional 5 fm gap PCAs. We believe that such a
scheme can be simply implemented in various THz
time domain setup leading to the simplifcation of the
system.
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