text: When generating THz radiation via a photoconductive emitter, an ultrafast pulse (typically 100 femtoseconds or shorter) creates charge carriers (electron-hole pairs) in a semiconductor material. This incident laser pulse abruptly changes the antenna from an insulating state into a conducting state.  Due to an electric bias applied across the antenna, a sudden electric current transmits across the antenna. This changing current lasts for about a picosecond, and thus emits terahertz radiation since the Fourier transform of a picosecond length signal will contain THz components.
  Typically the two antenna electrodes are patterned on a low temperature gallium arsenide (LT-GaAs), semi-insulating gallium arsenide (SI-GaAs), or other semiconductor (such as InP) substrate.
  In a commonly used scheme, the electrodes are formed into the shape of a simple dipole antenna with a gap of a few micrometers and have a bias voltage up to 40 V between them. The ultrafast laser pulse must have a wavelength that is short enough to excite electrons across the bandgap of the semiconductor substrate. This scheme is suitable for illumination with a Ti:sapphire oscillator laser with photon energies of 1.55 eV and pulse energies of about 10 nJ. For use with amplified Ti:sapphire lasers with pulse energies of about 1 mJ, the electrode gap can be increased to several centimeters with a bias voltage of up to 200 kV.
  More recent advances towards cost-efficient and compact THz-TDS systems are based on mode-locked fiber laser sources emitting at a center wavelength of 1550 nm. Therefore, the photoconductive emitters must be based on semiconductor materials with smaller band gaps of approximately 0.74 eV such as Fe-doped indium gallium arsenide or indium gallium arsenide/indium aluminum arsenide heterostructures.
  The short duration of THz pulses generated (typically ~2 ps) are primarily due to the rapid rise of the photo-induced current in the semiconductor and short carrier lifetime semiconductor materials (e.g., LT-GaAs).  This current may persist for only a few hundred femtoseconds to several nanoseconds depending on the substrate material.  This is not the only means of generation but is currently () the most common.
  Pulses produced by this method have average power levels on the order of several tens of microwatts. The peak power during pulses can be many orders of magnitude higher due to the low duty cycle of mostly >1%, which is dependent on the repetition rate of the laser source. The maximum bandwidth of the resulting THz pulse is primarily limited by the duration of the laser pulse, while the frequency position of the maximum of the Fourier spectrum is determined by the carrier lifetime of the semiconductor.