Nanocircuit transmitting microwave and terahertz harmonics generated by a mode-locked laser

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a nanocircuit that uses a mode-locked laser to generate and transmit microwave and terahertz harmonics through a tunneling diode-based system with optical antennas.

Contribution

It introduces a novel nanocircuit design that leverages laser-induced tunneling harmonics for microwave and terahertz signal transmission, expanding on previous tunneling microscopy techniques.

Findings

Harmonics decay above 45 THz within the tunneling junction.

The system successfully transmits selected microwave and terahertz harmonics.

The approach integrates optical antennas with tunneling diodes for harmonic generation.

Abstract

Earlier we focused a mode-locked laser on the tip-sample tunneling junction of a scanning tunneling microscope. This superimposed currents at hundreds of harmonics of the laser pulse-repetition rate on the DC tunneling current. The power at each harmonic is inversely proportional to its frequency. However, analysis suggests that within the tunneling junction the harmonics only decay above 45 THz as the exponent of minus the square of the product of the harmonic number and the laser duty cycle. Now this effect is applied in a nanocircuit with an optical antenna to receive the laser radiation, metal-insulator-metal tunneling diodes to generate the harmonics, and filters to select the microwave or terahertz harmonics that are transmitted by a second antenna.