New Optical Gating Technique for Detection of Electric Field Waveforms with Subpicosecond Resolution

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel optical gating method for detecting terahertz waveforms with subpicosecond resolution, enabling precise measurement of ultrafast electric field dynamics.

Contribution

The work presents a new optical gating technique that achieves femtosecond resolution in terahertz waveform detection, validated by experimental and theoretical agreement.

Findings

Achieved 250 femtosecond temporal resolution in THz waveform detection.

Demonstrated the method's consistency with electro-optic measurements.

Validated the hydrodynamic model predicting ultrafast plasmonic response.

Abstract

We report on the new optical gating technique used for the direct photoconductive detection of short pulses of terahertz radiation with the resolution up to 250 femtoseconds. The femtosecond optical laser pulse time delayed with respect to the THz pulse generated a large concentration of the electron hole pairs in the AlGaAs/InGaAs High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) drastically increasing the conductivity on the femtosecond scale and effectively shorting the source and drain. This optical gating quenched the response of the plasma waves launched by the THz pulse and allowed us to reproduce the waveform of the THz pulse by varying the time delay between the THz and quenching optical pulses. The results are in excellent agreement with the electro-optic effect measurements and with our hydrodynamic model that predicts the ultra-fast transistor plasmonic response at the time scale much shorter than the electron transit time, in full agreement with the measured data.