Effect of defect saturation on terahertz emission and detection properties of low temperature GaAs photoconductive switches

We present a study into the properties of terahertz (THz) emission and detection using low temperature grown GaAs photoconductive switches over a range of ex situ anneal temperatures. Our analysis focuses on the effect of defect saturation, which has been confirmed in many experiments. However its effect on the THz emission and detection has so far not been fully investigated. In this letter, we examine the dependence of the radiated THz pulse width (full width at half maximum) upon optical power, and show that the differences in the characteristics with annealing can be theoretically accounted for when defect saturation is taken into account. Defect saturation was found to substantially increase the trapping time of photoexcited electrons, which in turn can cause THz pulse broadening at high optical powers. This effect was found to increase with anneal temperature due to the decrease in defect density. The radiated peak THz amplitude from emitters increases monotonically with increasing optical power across the range of anneal temperatures investigated. In the detector configuration, however, the detected peak THz amplitude reaches a maximum before starting to decrease with increasing optical power. The latter trend was observed for devices annealed at temperatures higher than 300 degrees C and is attributed to the onset of defect saturation.