Experimental demonstration of efficient pulsed terahertz emission from a stacked GaAs/AlGaAs p-i-n-i heterostructure

Abstract

The pulsed optoelectronic terahertz emitter based on a δ-doped p-i-n-i GaAs/AlxGa1−xAs heterostructure, which was suggested by Reklaitis [Phys. Rev. B 77, 153309 (2008)], is investigated experimentally. It is shown that the heterostructure can serve as efficient antenna- and bias-free surface emitter. Its power exceeds the emission from InGaAs and InAs surfaces for optical excitation fluences below 0.7 μJ/cm2 at 82 MHz pulse repetition rate, respectively, 7 μJ/cm2 at 1 kHz, with potential for further improvement by carrier recombination management.