Transient THz Emission and Effective Mass Determination in Highly Resistive GaAs Crystals Excited by Femtosecond Optical Pulses

Abstract

We present comprehensive studies on the emission of broadband, free-space THz transients from several highly resistive GaAs samples excited by femtosecond optical pulses. Our test samples are characterized by different degrees of disorder, ranging from nitrogen-implanted to semi-insulating and annealed semi-insulating GaAs crystals. In our samples, we clearly observed transient THz emissions due to the optical rectification effect, as well as due to the presence of the surface depletion electrical field. Next, we arranged our experimental setup in such way that we could observe directly how the amplitude of surface-emitted THz optical pulses is affected by an applied, in-plane magnetic field. We ascribe this effect to the Lorentz force that additionally accelerates optically excited carriers. The magnetic-field factor η is a linear function of the applied magnetic field and is the largest for an annealed GaAs sample, while it is the lowest for an N-implanted GaAs annealed at the lowest (300 °C) temperature. The latter is directly related to the longest and shortest trapping times, respectively, measured using a femtosecond optical pump-probe spectroscopy technique. The linear dependence of the factor η on the trapping time enabled us to establish that, for all samples, regardless of their crystalline structure, the electron effective mass was equal to 0.059 of the electron mass m0, i.e., it was only about 6% smaller than the generally accepted 0.063m0 value for GaAs with a perfect crystalline structure.