Heterodyne Terahertz Detection through Plasmonic Photomixing

A novel heterodyne terahertz detection scheme based on plasmonic photomixing is presented, which is capable of offering high terahertz detection sensitivity levels and detection bandwidths at room temperature. The presented heterodyne detection scheme replaces terahertz mixer and local oscillator of conventional heterodyne receivers with a plasmonic photomixer pumped by an optical local oscillator provided by two wavelength tunable lasers with a terahertz frequency difference. We demonstrate a first proof-of-concept heterodyne receiver prototype designed for operation at 0.1 THz frequency range.