Two-path Plasmonic Interferometer with Integrated Detector
AssigneeSandia Corporation
InventorsGregory Conrad Dyer, Eric A. Shaner, Gregory Aizin
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An electrically tunable terahertz two-path plasmonic interferometer with an integrated detection element can down convert a terahertz field to a rectified DC signal. The integrated detector utilizes a resonant plasmonic homodyne mixing mechanism that measures the component of the plasma waves in-phase with an excitation field that functions as the local oscillator in the mixer. The plasmonic interferometer comprises two independently tuned electrical paths. The plasmonic interferometer enables a spectrometer-on-a-chip where the tuning of electrical path length plays an analogous role to that of physical path length in macroscopic Fourier transform interferometers.
Claims20
A two-path plasmonic interferometer, comprising:
- a layer providing a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) or two-dimensional hole gas (2DHG);
- a source and a drain at opposing ends of the 2DEG or 2DHG layer;
- a source-side gate, a central gate, and a drain-side gate disposed on and separated from the 2DEG or 2DHG layer;
- and
- a voltage source for applying a voltage independently to each of the gates to spatially modulate the electron or hole density in the 2DEG or 2DHG layer under each gate, thereby providing a source-side plasmonic path under the source-side gate and a drain-side plasmonic path under the drain-side gate and a plasmonic mixer under the central gate when the central gate is biased to near depletion;
- wherein a standing plasma wave from the source-side plasmonic path couples with a standing plasma wave from the drain-side plasmonic path interfere at the plasmonic mixer to provide a photoresponse when incident electromagnetic radiation is coupled to the 2DEG or 2DHG layer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.