Heterodyne mixing of millimetre electromagnetic waves and sub-THz sound in a semiconductor device

Heywood, Sarah L.; Glavin, Boris A.; Beardsley, R.P.; Akimov, Andrey V.; Carr, Michael W.; Norman, James; Norton, Philip C.; Prime, Brian; Priestley, Nigel; Kent, Anthony J.

Abstract

We demonstrate heterodyne mixing of a 94 GHz millimetre wave photonic signal, supplied by a Gunn diode oscillator, with coherent acoustic waves of frequency ~ 100 GHz, generated by pulsed laser excitation of a semiconductor surface. The mixing takes place in a millimetre wave Schottky diode, and the intermediate frequency electrical signal is in the 1 – 12 GHz range. The mixing process preserves all the spectral content in the acoustic signal that falls within the intermediate frequency bandwidth. Therefore this technique may find application in high-frequency acoustic spectroscopy measurements, exploiting the nanometre wavelength of sub-THz sound. The result also points the way to exploiting acoustoelectric effects in photonic devices working at sub-THz and THz frequencies, which could provide functionalities at these frequencies, e.g. acoustic wave filtering, that are currently in widespread use at lower (GHz) frequencies.

Citation

Heywood, S. L., Glavin, B. A., Beardsley, R., Akimov, A. V., Carr, M. W., Norman, J., …Kent, A. J. (in press). Heterodyne mixing of millimetre electromagnetic waves and sub-THz sound in a semiconductor device. Scientific Reports, 6, Article 30396. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep30396

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 30, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Aug 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jul 27, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 1, 2016
• Journal: Scientific Reports
• Electronic ISSN: 2045-2322
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Article Number: 30396
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/srep30396
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/797578
• Publisher URL: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep30396