We report an experimental and theoretical study of whispering-gallery-mode propagation of subpicosecond terahertz pulses in a dielectric cylinder coupled by means of a dielectric slab waveguide. We observed repetitive cavity pulses from this structure for which the output pulse shapes were determined by the multi-whispering-gallery-mode coupling into the cylinder. A coupled-mode theory derived for this cylindrical system and coupling structure gives reasonably good agreement with the experiment in both the frequency and time domains.
© 2003 Optical Society of America
(230.0230) Optical devices : Optical devices
(250.5530) Optoelectronics : Pulse propagation and temporal solitons
(260.2110) Physical optics : Electromagnetic optics
(320.5390) Ultrafast optics : Picosecond phenomena
(320.7090) Ultrafast optics : Ultrafast lasers
Jiangquan Zhang and D. Grischkowsky, "Whispering-gallery-mode cavity for terahertz pulses," J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 20, 1894-1904 (2003)