A 250 GHz Quasi-Optical Pulse Compressor with High Gain

A 250 GHz quasi-optical ring resonator/pulse compressor is presented. The ring consists of an input coupler and three mirrors. A low-loss semiconductor located in the ring provides the output coupling once irradiated by a laser. In the first tests with a 17 mW, 250 GHz source, 5.8 ns output pulses were generated with a power gain of 16. This is the first demonstration of a ring resonator/pulse compressor with high output power gain in the millimeter wave/THz regime. The resonator has many possible uses including applications at low power in spectroscopy and at high power in testing accelerator structures.