Interdigitated Photoconductive Antenna for Efficient Terahertz Generation and Detection

Abstract

THz signals can be generated commonly from Photoconductive Antenna (PCA) but the efficiency is low for the conventional PCA. This work improves the optical to terahertz conversion efficiency of the terahertz radiation by changing the conventional PCA structure to Interdigitated PCA (IPCA). The efficiency of PCA is dependent on the current pulse generated in the antenna structure when the laser pulse is incident on it. This paper targets to achieve high photo-current, as well as THz electric field from the IPCAs which are simulated using FEM and FDTD techniques. Also, the effect of various parameters such as current, gain, frequency bandwidth, optical to terahertz conversion efficiency, etc. are studied to study the importance of IPCAs.