Abstract

We report the recent measurement of optically induced terahertz beams from zinc-blende crystals (CdTe, CaAs, InP and their related structures) and their dependence on crystal orientation and incident photon energy. We compare the measured THz radiation signal with a model based on low- frequency optical rectification. The excellent agreement between the measurement and our calculations indicates that, under conditions of moderate optical fluence and normal incidence on the unbiased sample, second order optical rectification is the major nonlinear process that generates THz radiation. Therefore, THz optical rectification can be used to provide information about the resonant second order nonlinear susceptibility near the semiconductor band edge.

© 1994 Optical Society of America