Optically pumped terahertz silicon lasers

Abstract

Photoexcitation of shallow impurity centers in silicon at low temperatures (<10 K) yields stimulated emission from intra-center optical transitions in the terahertz range. The population inversion mechanisms are based on the peculiarities of electron-phonon interaction, leading to the existence of either a relatively long-living excited impurity state or a group of unpopulated impurity states.