Short terahertz pulses from semiconductor surfaces: The importance of bulk difference-frequency mixing

Abstract

The crystallographic orientation dependence of the far-infrared (FIR) light generated at the (001) surface of a zincblende semiconductor is shown to derive principally from bulk difference-frequency mixing. A strong modulation is observed for 1-GW/cm2 pulses on InP, which demonstrates that the radiated FIR wave produced by bulk optical rectification is comparable to that generated by the transport of photoinjected carriers. Using the bulk rectification light as a clock, we show that more than 95% of the light produced from an InP (111) crystal by 100-fs, 100-μJ pulses is generated in a time shorter than the excitation pulse.