New design boosts terahertz laser power output by 80%

Recently, research teams from Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Toronto made groundbreaking breakthroughs in miniature terahertz sources, and succeeded in increasing the power output of terahertz lasers by 80%. It is expected that in industry Imaging and chemical detection and other fields have been widely used. The project is now favored by NASA to measure oxygen content to explore interstellar media components. Due to the terahertz laser source emitting laser light in the opposite direction, resulting in its actual output efficiency is low, at least half of the energy was wasted, making the application is limited. In order to solve this problem, the research team adopted a new structural design. The use of quantum cascade laser to form a "standing wave" and to add cracks in the standing wave, making the terahertz laser can burst out of the waveguide, and coincide with the opposite direction of the band to increase the laser intensity. The device successfully led 80% of the laser intensity in the right direction. At the same time, the design also solves the problem of laser synthetic loss caused by traditional mirrors and is very important for improving the efficiency of the terahertz laser. This design is used to further increase the power of the THz laser, but some of it is still wasted. The future also need to improve the overall performance of the laser beam, resulting in higher quality laser beam.