Two types of room temperature detectors of terahertz laser radiation have been developed which allow in an all-electric manner to determine the plane of polarization of linearly polarized radiation and the Stokes parameters of elliptically polarized radiation, respectively. The operation of the detectors is based on photogalvanic effects in semiconductor quantum well structures of low symmetry. The photogalvanic effects have nanoseconds time constants at room temperature making a high time resolution of the polarization detectors possible.
@article{arxiv.0707.4642,
title = {Subnanosecond Ellipticity Detector for Laser Radiation (second version, extended)},
author = {S. D. Ganichev and W. Weber and J. Kiermaier and S. N. Danilov and P. Olbrich and D. Schuh and W. Wegscheider and D. Bougeard and G. Abstreiter and W. Prettl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0707.4642},
year = {2009}
}