Researchers at EPFL and Harvard University have engineered a chip that can convert between electromagnetic pulses in the terahertz and optical ranges on the same device. Their integrated design could enable the development of devices for ultrafast telecommunications, ranging, spectroscopy, and computing.
Terahertz radiation describes a band of waves on the electromagnetic spectrum with frequencies higher than microwaves (which are used in telecommunications technologies like Wi-Fi) but lower than infrared light (used in lasers and fiber optics). Their short wavelengths mean that terahertz (THz) signals can transmit large amounts of data very fast, but connecting THz radiation to existing optical and microwave technologies has been extremely challenging.
In 2023, researchers in the Laboratory of Hybrid Photonics came one step closer to bridging this gap when they created an extremely thin photonic chip made of lithium niobate that, when connected to a laser beam, produced finely tailorable THz waves. Now, the team has reported a novel design that not only generates THz waves but detects incoming ones as well by converting them to optical signals.
This bi-directional conversion on a single, miniaturized platform is an essential step toward bridging the THz and optical domains and could enable the development of compact and power-efficient devices for communication, sensing, spectroscopy and computing. The research has been published in Nature Communications.
“In addition to demonstrating the first detection of THz pulses on a lithium niobate photonic circuit chip, we generated THz electric fields over 100 times stronger and increased the bandwidth by a factor of five (going from 680 GHz to 3.5 THz),” says Cristina Benea-Chelmus, head of the Laboratory of Hybrid Photonics.
From terahertz radar to 6G communications
Ph.D. student and first author Yazan Lampert explains that the team’s innovative design centers on embedding micron-sized structures called
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