Using leftover high-speed electrons from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Linac Coherent Light Source, researchers have successfully generated intense pulses of light in a largely untapped part of the electromagnetic spectrum: the so-called terahertz gap.
Falling between visible frequencies and microwaves on the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz waves are being used in new sensing technologies and biological imaging techniques that cause minimal radiation damage to samples. Other potential uses include chemical and biological materials identification, photonic devices, microelectronics characterization and biomedical imaging. Until now, however, the quest to develop many of these applications has been frustrated by an inability to produce terahertz light that’s bright enough.
“We’ve generated terahertz light pulses with field strengths comparable to the forces that hold atoms together in materials or exist within nanoscale devices,” said Aaron Lindenberg, a member of the Stanford PULSE Institute for Ultrafast Energy Science, and SIMES, the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science. “It’s a big leap forward in terms of the magnitude of the electromagnetic fields that we’re generating."
Also: Learn about a tunable terahertz source based on near-infrared diode lasers.
