Efficient Fabrication of Intrinsic-Josephson-Junction Terahertz Oscillators with Greatly Reduced Self-Heating Effects

Abstract

The hunt is on for sources of photons to fill the so-called ``terahertz gap'' in the electromagnetic spectrum, for applications spanning medical diagnosis, imaging, security, ultrahigh-speed communication, and biotechnology. The authors suppress the inevitable self-heating of intrinsic Josephson junctions in Bi${}_{2}$Sr${}_{2}$CaCu${}_{2}$O${}_{8+\ensuremath{\delta}}$, realizing an emitter with strongly expanded tunability and a range from 0.3 to 1.63 THz---and potentially extending to 15 THz, which would cover almost the entire gap with one device.