First Terahertz Amplifier ‘Goes to 11’
The world’s first radio amplifier operating at terahertz frequencies could lead to communications systems with much higher data rates, better radar, high-resolution imaging that could penetrate smoke and fog, and better ways of identifying dangerous substances, say the researchers who built it.
“We just took it up to 11,” says Bill Deal of the Terahertz Laboratory at Northrup Grumman, which built the amplifier under the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Terahertz Electronics program. Engineers announced their achievement last week in a press conference at which the Guinness Book of World Records recognized them for creating the fastest solid-state amplifier circuit ever built.
The terahertz region is that band of frequencies that lie between infrared light and radio waves—a region whose borders are usually defined as 300 gigahertz and 3 terahertz. Engineers would like to open up that part of the spectrum for communications. T-rays, as they’re known, also have the advantage of being able to penetrate many materials without using ionizing radiation, and to identify substances spectroscopically, which makes them suited to finding drugs, explosives, and pathogens. The problem is that it’s been notoriously difficult to build sources and detectors in that region of the spectrum.
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