TY - JOUR
T1 - Milliwatt terahertz harmonic generation from topological insulator metamaterials
AU - Tielrooij, Klaas-Jan
AU - Principi, Alessandro
AU - Reig, David Saleta
AU - Block, Alexander
AU - Varghese, Sebin
AU - Schreyeck, Steffen
AU - Brunner, Karl
AU - Karczewski, Grzegorz
AU - Ilyakov, Igor
AU - Ponomaryov, Oleksiy
AU - de Oliveira, Thales V.A.G.
AU - Chen, Min
AU - Deinert, Jan-Christoph
AU - Carbonell, Carmen Gomez
AU - Valenzuela, Sergio O.
AU - Molenkamp, Laurens W.
AU - Kiessling, Tobias
AU - Astakhov, Georgy V.
AU - Kovalev, Sergey
N1 - Funding Information:
Parts of this research were carried out at ELBE at the Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., a member of the Helmholtz Association. Simone Zanotto is acknowledged for developing the RCWA code dedicated to the treatment of the two-dimensional conducting interface. We acknowledge discussions with G. Kh. Kitaeva and K. A. Kuznetsov. K.J.T. acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 804349 (ERC StG CUHL), RYC fellowship No. RYC-2017-22330, and IAE project PID2019-111673GB-I00. ICN2 was supported by the Severo Ochoa program from Spanish MINECO Grant No. SEV-2017-0706. A.P. acknowledges support from the European Commission under the EU Horizon 2020 MSCA-RISE-2019 programme (project 873028 HYDROTRONICS) and from the Leverhulme Trust under the grant RPG-2019-363. S.S., K.B., T.K., and L.W.M. acknowledge support by the SFB1170 (DFG project ID 258499086). C.G. and S.O.V. acknowledge support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 FET-PROACTIVE project TOCHA under grant agreement 824140. T.K., L.W.M., and G.V.A. acknowledge the financial support from the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence on Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter (EXC 2147, 390858490).
PY - 2022/11/1
Y1 - 2022/11/1
N2 - Achieving efficient, high-power harmonic generation in the terahertz spectral domain has technological applications, for example, in sixth generation (6G) communication networks. Massless Dirac fermions possess extremely large terahertz nonlinear susceptibilities and harmonic conversion efficiencies. However, the observed maximum generated harmonic power is limited, because of saturation effects at increasing incident powers, as shown recently for graphene. Here, we demonstrate room-temperature terahertz harmonic generation in a Bi2Se3 topological insulator and topological-insulator-grating metamaterial structures with surface-selective terahertz field enhancement. We obtain a third-harmonic power approaching the milliwatt range for an incident power of 75 mW—an improvement by two orders of magnitude compared to a benchmarked graphene sample. We establish a framework in which this exceptional performance is the result of thermodynamic harmonic generation by the massless topological surface states, benefiting from ultrafast dissipation of electronic heat via surface-bulk Coulomb interactions. These results are an important step towards on-chip terahertz (opto)electronic applications.
AB - Achieving efficient, high-power harmonic generation in the terahertz spectral domain has technological applications, for example, in sixth generation (6G) communication networks. Massless Dirac fermions possess extremely large terahertz nonlinear susceptibilities and harmonic conversion efficiencies. However, the observed maximum generated harmonic power is limited, because of saturation effects at increasing incident powers, as shown recently for graphene. Here, we demonstrate room-temperature terahertz harmonic generation in a Bi2Se3 topological insulator and topological-insulator-grating metamaterial structures with surface-selective terahertz field enhancement. We obtain a third-harmonic power approaching the milliwatt range for an incident power of 75 mW—an improvement by two orders of magnitude compared to a benchmarked graphene sample. We establish a framework in which this exceptional performance is the result of thermodynamic harmonic generation by the massless topological surface states, benefiting from ultrafast dissipation of electronic heat via surface-bulk Coulomb interactions. These results are an important step towards on-chip terahertz (opto)electronic applications.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85141002457&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41377-022-01008-y
DO - 10.1038/s41377-022-01008-y
M3 - Article
C2 - 36316317
AN - SCOPUS:85141002457
SN - 2095-5545
VL - 11
JO - Light: Science and Applications
JF - Light: Science and Applications
M1 - 315
ER -