Optical efficiency enhancement methods for terahertz receiving photoconductive switches

We improve the efficiency of THz receiving photoconductive switches by improving the conversion of the optical pump to signal current. This is achieved by both optimizing the incident excitation beam polarization and spatial profile of excitation. Due to boundary conditions of the electric field at the electrode edge, a nanometer-sized polarization-dependent shadow is created in the substrate at the electrode edge where most picosecond lifetime photocarriers are collected. This edge effect is further harnessed by elongating the excitation beam next to the stripline electrode. The effects of excitation beam polarization and spatial profile were experimented with InGaAs/InAlAs quantum-well-based photoconductive switch. In both cases notable enhancement in the signal is observed-30% with polarization optimization and up to 100% with beam elongation. Both techniques preserve the pulse quality and are applicable with readily available optical elements.