Researchers have found in both-dimensional operating systems a new effect that promises improved performance for terahertz detectors.
A team of scientists at the Cavendish Laboratory and colleagues at the University of Augsburg (Germany) and Lancaster have discovered a new body effect when two-dimensional electron systems are exposed to terahertz waves.
First, what are terahertz waves? “We communicate using microwave radios and use infrared cameras to see at night. Terahertz is a type of electromagnetic radiation between microwave and infrared radiation,” explains Prof. David Ritchie, Head of Semiconductor Physics Group at the Cavendish University Laboratory of Cambridge, “but at the moment, there is a lack of resources and equipment for this type of radiation that is cheap, efficient, and easy to use. This prevents widespread use of terahertz technology.”
Researchers from the Semiconductor Physics team and researchers from Pisa and Torino in Italy were the first to demonstrate, in 2002, the performance of a laser on terahertz frequencies, a quantum cascade laser. Since then, the team has continued to research terahertz physics and technology and is currently investigating and developing functional terahertz devices that combine metamatadium with building modulators and new types of detectors.
If material shortages were to be resolved, terahertz radiation could have many useful applications in security, material science, communications, and medicine. For example, terahertz waves allow you to take pictures of cancerous tissue that cannot be seen with the naked eye. They can be employed in the new generations of safe and fast airport scanners that make it possible to separate drugs from illegal drugs and explosives. They can be used to enable wireless connections much faster than the current situation.
So, what are the latest findings? “We were building a new terahertz detector,” said Drs. Wladyslaw Michailow, Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge, “but when we measured its performance, it showed a much stronger signal than expected from a theoretical level. we have come up with a new meaning. “
This explanation, as scientists claim, lies in the way light interacts with matter. At higher levels, the case absorbs light into isolated particles — photons. This definition, first proposed by Einstein, formed the basis of quantum mechanics and explained the photoelectric effect. This quantum photoexcitation is how light is detected by cameras on our smartphones, producing electricity in the light of solar cells.
