Analysis of Screening Effects on Terahertz Photoconductive Devices using a Fully-Coupled Multiphysics Approach

Chen, Liang; Bagci, Hakan

Analysis of Screening Effects on Terahertz Photoconductive Devices using a Fully-Coupled Multiphysics Approach

Files

09403899.pdf (7.07 MB)

License

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Type

Article

Authors

Chen, Liang

Bagci, Hakan

KAUST Department

Computational Electromagnetics Laboratory
Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division
Electrical and Computer Engineering Program

KAUST Grant Number

2016-CRG5-2953
2019-CRG8-4056

Preprint Posting Date

2021-04-14

Date

2021

Abstract

The terahertz current generated by a photoconductive device (PCD) saturates as the power of the input optical pump is increased. This behavior is induced by various screening effects that stem from the interactions between electromagnetic (EM) fields and semiconductor carriers. In this work, these screening effects are numerically analyzed for the first time using a fully-coupled multiphysics approach. Unlike the previously developed simulation frameworks, this approach rigorously models the nonlinear coupling between the EM fields and the carriers and therefore is capable of accounting for the screening effects. It is demonstrated that the results obtained using this multiphysics approach and actual experiments are in excellent agreement. The optical- and radiation-field screening effects are identified in the simulation results and the optical-field screening is found to play a more dominant role in the saturation of the PCD output under high optical pump power levels.

Citation

Chen, L., & Bagci, H. (2021). Analysis of Screening Effects on Terahertz Photoconductive Devices using a Fully-Coupled Multiphysics Approach. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 1–1. doi:10.1109/jlt.2021.3072890

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Office of Sponsored Research under Award 2016-CRG5-2953 and Award 2019-CRG8-4056. The authors would like to thank the KAUST Supercomputing Laboratory (KSL) for providing the required computational resources.