Interdigitated Photoconductive Switches for Terahertz Pulses Emission with Electrical Control of Polarization

Photoconductive switches are widely used for emission and/or detection of terahertz pulses, linearly polarized in a direction fixed by electrodes' geometry. In this work, innovative designs of photoconductive switches are demonstrated and characterized, providing full electrical control on the direction of polarization of the emitted field. Based on an interdigitated scalable geometry, it might be used either for emission or detection, allows fast polarization modulation and polarimetry measurements with a large area receiver. Degree of polarization better than 98% has been measured and investigated numerically. It opens the field of precision terahertz polarimetry.