Terahertz Slot Waveguide for Taperless Interfacing

We propose a slot waveguide with taperless interfaces that can couple terahertz waves directly from metallic hollow waveguides, leading to an entirely new coupling mechanism for interconnection between planar and non-planar waveguides. Such a direct coupling strategy results in an exceptional coupling efficiency of up to 90% over the WR-2.2 band (330-500 GHz) with a large fractional bandwidth of 36%. The proposed waveguides are experimentally validated exhibiting an excellent agreement between measurement and simulation. The decent coupling efficiencies are further exemplified by communications leading to error-free transmission at a data rate of 32 Gbit/s.