Polarization modulation of terahertz electromagnetic radiation by four-contact photoconductive antenna

Generation and modulation of circularly polarized terahertz electromagnetic radiation have been demonstrated by using a four-contact photoconductive antenna and a total-reflection Si prism. The quality of the circularly polarized terahertz pulsed radiation has been evaluated by using a polarization sensitive terahertz time-domain spectroscopy system. The characteristic of the dynamic modulation between the left and right circularly polarized states of the THz radiation is also evaluated. The ellipticity of the modulated circularly polarized THz radiation without a polarizer is not as good as that of the non-modulated because of the non-uniform bias field distribution and the asymmetric pump laser intensity profile on the photoconductive gap. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.