Amplified Stimulated Terahertz Emission at Room temperature from Optically Pumped Graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates room temperature terahertz stimulated emission from optically pumped graphene, showing population inversion and amplification, with potential applications in terahertz photonics.

Contribution

It reports the first experimental observation of terahertz stimulated emission and population inversion in graphene at room temperature.

Findings

Graphene acts as an amplifying medium for terahertz emission.

Emission spectra align with pumping photon spectrum and show threshold behavior.

Negative conductivity and population inversion are evidenced at specific pumping intensities.

Abstract

Room temperature Terahertz stimulated emission and population inversion in optically pumped graphene is reported. We experimentally observe fast relaxation and relatively slow recombination dynamics of photogenerated electrons/holes in an exfoliated graphene on SiO2/Si substrate under pumping with a 1550-nm, 80-fs pulsed fiber laser beam and probing with the corresponding terahertz beam generated by optical rectification in a nonlinear electro optical sensor. The time resolved electric field intensity originating from the coherent terahertz photon emission is electro-optically sampled in an total-reflection geometry. The comparison of terahertz electric fields intensities measured on SiO2/Si substrate and that one from graphene clearly indicate that graphene sheet act like an amplifying medium. The Emission spectra agrees relatively well the pumping photon spectrum and its dependency on the pumping power shows a threshold like behavior, testifying the occurrence of the negative conductivity in the THz spectral range and the population inversion. The threshold pumping intensity > 5*10^6 W/cm^2 is in a good agreement with simulations.