Enhancing the photomixing efficiency of optoelectronic devices in the terahertz regime

A method to reduce the transit time of majority of carriers in photomixers and photo detectors to < 1 ps is proposed. Enhanced optical fields associated with surface plasmon polaritons, coupled with velocity overshoot phenomenon results in net decrease of transit time of carriers. As an example, model calculations demonstrating > 280× (or ∼2800 and 31.8 μW at 1 and 5 THz respectively) improvement in THz power generation efficiency of a photomixer based on Low Temperature grown GaAs are presented. Due to minimal dependence on the carrier recombination time, it is anticipated that the proposed method paves the way for enhancing the speed and efficiency of photomixers and detectors covering UV to far infrared communications wavelengths (300 to 1600 nm).