A theoretical study of operation conditions for a terahertz superlattice parametric oscillator

Abstract We report a theoretical study of operation conditions for a terahertz superlattice parametric oscillator (SPO). The SPO converts radiation of frequency ω to radiation at frequency 3 ω . The parametric process is based on the nonlinearity of the motion of a miniband electron in a high-frequency field consisting of a strong fundamental-frequency field and a higher harmonic field. In our study we made use of a semiclassical theory. Our analysis indicates that parametric frequency upconversion should allow for production of radiation up to several terahertz.