Analysis of photomixer receivers for continuous-wave terahertz radiation

We examine the electrical properties of photomixer receivers for the homodyne detection of continuous-wave terahertz radiation and analyze the coupling between the incoming terahertz field and the current flowing in the receiver circuit for two designs of photomixer. Significantly, we find that the optimum geometry for a photomixer receiver is very different to the optimized emitter designs despite the optical symmetry between the generation and detection processes.