Terahertz radiation detectors: the state-of-the-art

Abstract

The phenomena and recent progress in the evolution of the basic classes of the THz detectors that exist today are considered. Issues associated with the development and exploitation of THz radiation detectors in human activity applications are briefly addressed. The operation conditions of the THz detectors and their upper limit performance are discussed. Because of lack of space not all the important references will be mentioned. Where reasonable, mainly publications after 2011 are addressed.

QPSK detection using glow discharge detector and a photodiode for millimeter‐wave and terahertz communication

“…One of the challenges in MMW communication is to develop sensitive detectors in that region . A comparison between different THz uncooled thermal detectors appears was performed recently . The typical detector in that region is the GaAs Schottky barrier diode, which is very expensive and it can be damaged by incident high power and electric discharge …”

Numerical simulation of terahertz radiation in photoconductive antenna

“…Over past two decades, the generation and detection of free‐space electromagnetic waves in the frequency range ( ν ≈ 0.1‐10 THz, λ = 3 mm‐30 μm) have been commonly considered as one of the greatest developments in the field of ultrafast optics . With the rapid development of femtosecond laser and new material technology in recent years, terahertz (THz) waves can be generated by many methods, such as photoconductive antenna (PCA), optical rectification in crystal, photomixing, semiconductor surface, quantum cascade laser, and coherent excitation of polar optical photon .…”

“…With the rapid development of femtosecond laser and new material technology in recent years, terahertz (THz) waves can be generated by many methods, such as photoconductive antenna (PCA), optical rectification in crystal, photomixing, semiconductor surface, quantum cascade laser, and coherent excitation of polar optical photon . Then, the wide applications of new THz technologies have been emerged and substantially developed as one of the attractive fields, such as safety inspection, medical diagnosis, environmental science, basic physics research as well as information communication . THz PCA is one of the most commonly used devices as THz source and/or detector, which is usually used for the generation and detection of THz radiation on the substrate by transient photocarriers induced by ultrafast laser pulses …”

A tunable high-Q millimeter wave cavity for hybrid circuit and cavity QED experiments

“…Harnessing the features of our cavity design, we realize a hybrid mm-wave and optical cavity, designed for interconversion and entanglement of mm-wave and optical photons using Rydberg atoms. chemical sensing and effective medical diagnostics 25,26 . Recently, the search for higher bandwidth and lower latency communication brought mm-wave wave frequencies into the focus of the telecommunication industry 27,28 .…”