Seminarium Fizyki Ciała Stałego

More than 30 years ago, a new scientific direction opened-up with the arrival of plasma-wave electronics. Discovery that the plasma waves could propagate faster than electrons fascinated all. Devices using plasma waves were expected to work effectively in the very high frequencies – reaching terahertz (THz) range, inaccessible to standard electronic devices. In this talk I will present history of the most important experimental developments paving the way towards nowadays THz photonics. I will discuss the physical limits of the plasma wave detectors performances and describe details of the first demonstration of THz amplification by graphene nanostructures1. We will present also the results on GaN/AlGaN based Terahertz plasmonic nanostructures2, that despite very different energy band structure in many aspects – mimic graphene nanostructures - used in the first THz amplification experiments. We will show that such GaN/AlGaN nanostructures can be used as voltage tunable THz filters. After presenting recent developments and the state of the art we will describe physical and technological limits of plasmonic detectors, filters and amplifiers, necessary for development of fast wireless communication and Terahertz Photonics based nondestructive quality/security systems. [1] Room Temperature Amplification of Terahertz Radiation by Grating-Gate Graphene Structures S. Boubanga-Tombet, W. Knap, D. Yadav, A. Satou, D. B. But, V. V. Popov, I. V. Gorbenko, V. Kachorovskii, and T. Otsuji Phys. PhysRevX.10.031004 (2020) [2] Electrical Tuning of Terahertz Plasmonic Crystal PhasesP. Sai, V. V. Korotyeyev, M. Dub, M. Słowikowski, M. Filipiak, D. B. But, Yu. Ivonyak, M. Sakowicz, Yu. M. Lyaschuk, S. M. Kukhtaruk, G. Cywiński and W. Knap Phys. Rev. X 13, 041003, (2023) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Funded by the European Union (ERC ADAVANCED PROJECT -TERAPLASM #101053716). The work was also supported by the “International Research Agendas” Projects CENTERA &CENTERA2 of the Foundation for Polish Science co-financed by the European Union under the European Regional Development Fund (Grant No. MAB/2018/9 for CENTERA & FENG.02.01-IP.05-T004/23) for CENTERA2).