Resonant dipole antennas for continuous-wave terahertz photomixers

We present measurements and numerical simulations for the performance of resonant dipole antennas used in continuous-wave terahertz photomixers. We demonstrate that center-feed dipoles, with inductively choked electrical feeds, are a good choice for a resonant emitter design, and outperform broadband spiral antennas by a factor of five at a resonant frequency of 0.4 THz . Excellent agreement is found between experiment and the predictions of finite element simulations. Furthermore, we show that the dipoles can outperform spirals across frequency bands of over 0.5 THz , opening the way for their use in terahertz spectroscopy.