Electronic Phase Detection with sub-10 fs Timing Jitter for Terahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy Systems

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a significant reduction in electronic timing jitter in terahertz time-domain spectroscopy systems, greatly enhancing spectral resolution, bandwidth, and measurement accuracy.

Contribution

The authors achieved over six-fold reduction in timing jitter and nearly eliminated systematic errors, improving spectral resolution and measurement precision in terahertz spectroscopy.

Findings

Timing jitter reduced from 59.0 fs to 8.6 fs

Enhanced spectral resolution and bandwidth

Measurement accuracy improved by over five times

Abstract

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy systems based on resonator-internal repetition-rate modulation, such as SLAPCOPS [12] and ECOPS [11], rely on electronic phase detectors which are typically prone to exhibit both a non-negligible random and systematic timing error. This limits the quality of the recorded information significantly. Here, we present the results of our recent attempt to reduce these errors in our own electronic phase detection systems. A more than six-fold timing-jitter reduction from 59.0 fs to 8.6 fs led to a significant increase in both exploitable terahertz bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. Additionally, utilizing our interferometrically monitored delay line as a calibration standard, the systematic error could be removed almost entirely and thus, excellent resolution of spectral absorption lines be accomplished. These improvements increased the accuracy of our multi-layer thickness measurements based on electronic phase detection by more than a factor of five, pushing the overall performance well into the sub-{\mu}m regime.