Terahertz pump – terahertz probe system at Novosibirsk free electron laser: commissioning and results of first experiments

A single-color pump-probe system has been commissioned at the Novosibirsk free electron laser facility. Monochromatic laser radiation with a bandwidth of about 1% can be tuned within the spectral ranges of 90 – 240 and 30 - 90 μm. The laser emits radiation as a continuous stream of 100-ps pulses with a repetition rate of 5.6 MHz. The average Radiation power can reach 100 W. The temperature of samples located in a helium cryostat can be varied from 2 up to 325 K. The results of first pump-probe measurements of non-equilibrium dynamics of hot electrons in a Ge:Sb crystal at T=5÷50 K are presented

Low-Temperature Intracenter Relaxation Times of Shallow Donors in Germanium

The relaxation times of localized states of antimony donors in unstrained and strained germanium uniaxially compressed along the [111] crystallographic direction are measured at cryogenic temperatures. The measurements are carried out in a single-wavelength pump–probe setup using radiation from the Novosibirsk free electron laser (NovoFEL). The relaxation times in unstrained crystals depend on the temperature and excitation photon energy. Measurements in strained crystals are carried out under stress bar S > 300, in which case the ground-state wavefunction is formed by states belonging to a single valley in the germanium conduction band. It is shown that the application of uniaxial strain leads to an increase in the relaxation time, which is explained by a decrease in the number of relaxation channels

First terahertz-range experiments on pump – probe setup at Novosibirsk free electron laser

A single-color pump-probe system has been commissioned at the Novosibirsk free electron laser. The laser emits a tunable monochromatic terahertz radiation. To prove the proper system operation, we investigated the time-resolved absorption of a sample of n-type germanium doped with antimony, which was previously investigated at the FELBE facility, in the temperature range from 5 to 40 K. The measured relaxation time amounted to about 1.7 ns, which agreed with the results obtained at the FELBE. The results of pump-probe measurements of non-equilibrium dynamics of hot electrons in the germanium crystal at cryogenic temperatures are presented for wavelengths of 105, 141 and 150 μm