Discovery Unlocks Terahertz Technology for Quantum Sensing

Rice University researchers have identified a way to utilize the “new terahertz gap” using strontium titanate, enabling the development of innovative optical technologies in the 3-19 terahertz range. This discovery could lead to advancements in quantum materials and medical diagnostics.Visible light is a mere fraction of the

Illustration of a quantum paraelectric lens that focuses light pulses with frequencies from 5-15 terahertz. Incoming terahertz light pulses are converted into surface phonon-polaritons by ring-shaped polymer gratings and disk resonators atop a substrate of strontium titanate .

Rui Xu, a Rice University materials science and nanoengineering student, is a lead author on a study that shows strontium titanate has the potential to enable efficient photonic devices at frequencies from 3-19 terahertz. Credit: Photo by Gustavo Raskosky/Rice UniversityZhu’s group has turned the strong interaction to its advantage with strontium titanate, an oxide of strontium and titanium.

Unlike other materials that support phonon-polaritons in higher frequencies and usually in a narrow range, strontium titanate works for the entire 5-15 terahertz gap because of a property called quantum paraelectricity. Its atoms exhibit large quantum fluctuations and vibrate randomly, thus capturing light effectively without being self-trapped by the captured light, even at zero degrees Kelvin.

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