Speaker
Description
THz radiation is subject to a wide range of research and technological efforts, but it is limited by a lack of compact and powerful THz sources. A promising candidate is the quantum cascade laser (QCL), although it currently requires cryogenics since they only operate below 200 K. We present the first THz QCL operating on a thermoelectric cooler, up to a record-high temperature of 210 K. The design achieves high-temperature operation thanks to a systematic optimization by means of a nonequilibrium Green's function model, which also reliably reproduces the experimental results. Thanks to the relatively high peak power measured at 206 K (>1 mW), the laser spectra were acquired with a commercial room-temperature detector, making the whole setup cryogenic free.
