Resonant dipole antennas for continuous-wave terahertz photomixers

摘要

We present measurements and numerical simulations for the performance of resonant dipole antennas used in continuous-wave terahertz photomixers. We demonstrate that center-feed dipoles, with inductively choked electrical feeds, are a good choice for a resonant emitter design, and outperform broadband spiral antennas by a factor of five at a resonant frequency of 0.4 THz. Excellent agreement is found between experiment and the predictions of finite element simulations. Furthermore, we show that the dipoles can outperform spirals across frequency bands of over 0.5 THz, opening the way for their use in terahertz spectroscopy. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.