Coherent and Tunable THz Emission Driven by an Integrated III–V Semiconductor Laser

Abstract

We demonstrate coherent and tunable THz emission by excitation of a unitraveling-carrier photodiode by a dual-frequency III–V semiconductor laser emitting up to 80 mW of optical power around 1 $\mu$ m. The laser is an optically-pumped vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser that operates simultaneously on two transverse Laguerre–Gauss modes. Modes frequency difference is driven by thermal effects, band-filling effects and/or phase masks, allowing THz emission from 50 GHz to few THz. To reach THz emission from a pigtailed photodiode, we detail quantitatively how orthogonal transverse modes can be coupled within a single-mode fiber, leading to more than 20% beat efficiency. Coherent THz emission spectrum is presented with a linewidth of about 150 kHz for 3-ms acquisition time, and an output power limited by the photodiode (typically 1 $\mu$ W at 300 GHz). Frequency noise is measured for the optical transverse modes along with the THz signal. The latter presents a frequency noise that is about 20-dB lower than the optical ones, thus proving that the dual-frequency concept allows frequency noise reduction by correlating part of the technical noise of the two modes.