Design, fabrication, and testing of prototypes for 1-10 GHZ using laser-assisted field emission

摘要

Quantum simulations show that tunneling electrons have a resonant interaction with a radiation field that an markedly increase the current [1]. The simulations suggest that this effect could be used to switch field emission currents in times as short as 10 fs with a pulsed laser [2], and to generate ultrawideband signals from dc to over 100 THz by photomixing in resonant laser-assisted field emission [3-5]. Output powers exceeding 1 mW are predicted because the quantum resonance can increase the effect of the radiation field by approximately 30 db. For comparison, at the present time photomixers with low-temperature-grown GaAs can provide an output power of 1 μW at 1 THz with a roll-off of 12 dB per octave increase in frequency [6], but no wide-band tunable sources are available for operation at higher frequencies.