Terahertz Light Sources by Electronic-Oscillator-Driven Second Harmonic Generation in Extreme-Confinement Cavities

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method to generate coherent terahertz radiation by using second-harmonic generation in specially designed dielectric cavities driven by electronic oscillators, potentially bridging the terahertz gap.

Contribution

It introduces hybrid dielectric cavity designs that combine high field concentration and nonlinear materials to efficiently produce THz radiation from electronic oscillators.

Findings

Predicted conversion efficiencies exceeding 10^3%/W.

Potential to generate 1 W of THz power.

Enables cascaded parametric frequency conversion.

Abstract

The majority of sources of coherent optical radiation rely on laser oscillators driven by population inversion. Despite their technological importance in communications, medicine, industry, and other fields, it remains a challenge to access the spectral range of 0.1-10 THz (the "terahertz gap"), a frequency band for applications ranging from spectroscopy to security and high-speed wireless communications. Here, we propose a way to produce coherent radiation spanning the THz gap by efficient second-harmonic generation (SHG) in low-loss dielectric structures, starting from technologically mature electronic oscillators (EOs) in the ~100 GHz range. To achieve this goal, we introduce hybrid THz-band dielectric cavity designs that combine (1) extreme field concentration in high-quality-factor resonators with (2) nonlinear materials enhanced by phonon resonances. We theoretically predict conversion efficiencies of >$10^3$ %/W and the potential to bridge the THz gap with 1 W of input power. This approach enables efficient, cascaded parametric frequency converters, representing a new generation of light sources extensible into the mid-IR spectrum and beyond.