Jean-François Lampin
Directeur de Recherche CNRS
Institut d’Electronique de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie (IEMN)
“Continuous-wave Terahertz sources and applications”
Terahertz (THz) radiation is extremely appealing for fundamental and applied research. On the fundamental side it is particularly useful to understand the basic properties of matter in a very large range of scales (from nanostructures to astronomical molecular clouds) and on the applied side it is suited to material identification (spectroscopy), security/industrial imaging, and high data rate free-space communications. In this seminar I will present in a first part a survey of the research activities of the Terahertz Photonics group of IEMN. These are on the one hand dedicated to the simulation, design and manufacturing of optoelectronic THz components such as photoswitchs, photomixers, lasers, waveguides, antennas, detectors, non-reciprocal components … And secondly to their use in various applications: THz communications, THz near-field spectroscopy and microscopy. I will then focus on our recent development of a THz laser based on the optical pumping of molecules by a mid-infrared quantum cascade laser. Good conversion efficiencies have been obtained using the ammonia molecule. I will also present our last results concerning the frequency noise and the frequency locking of such laser.