Ultrafast uncooled THz optomechanical bolometers (Conference Presentation)

The room temperature detection of terahertz (THz) waves remains a challenging task, especially for detectors operating at room temperature. Among the solutions that have been proposed, thermal detectors based on bilayer membranes combined with metamaterial absorbers provide competitive sensitivity and detection speed in the kHz range. We have recently proposed a new device concept, where the photo-thermal interactions take place in a single meta-atom resonator with subwavelength dimensions. Thanks to the compactness of our device, the thermal diffusion time is reduced down to the µs range and the detector speed is increased beyond 10MHz, with 1GHz at reach. I will discuss experimental measurements and dynamical modelling of the detector performance.