Precise and ultrafast control over photo-induced charge currents across nanoscale interfaces could lead to important applications in energy harvesting, ultrafast electronics, and coherent terahertz sources. Recent studies have shown that several relativistic mechanisms, including inverse spin-Hall effect, inverse Rashba–Edelstein effect, and inverse spin-orbit-torque effect, can convert longitudinally injected spin-polarized currents from magnetic materials to transverse charge currents, thereby harnessing these currents for terahertz generation. However, these mechanisms typically require external magnetic fields and exhibit limitations in terms of spin-polarization rates and efficiencies of relativistic spin-to-charge conversion. We present a nonrelativistic and nonmagnetic mechanism that directly utilizes the photoexcited high-density charge currents across the interface. We demonstrate that the electrical anisotropy of conductive oxides RuO₂ and IrO₂ can effectively deflect injected charge currents to the transverse direction, resulting in efficient and broadband terahertz radiation. Importantly, this mechanism has the potential to offer much higher conversion efficiency compared to previous methods, as conductive materials with large electrical anisotropy are readily available, whereas further increasing the spin-Hall angle of heavy-metal materials would be challenging. Our findings offer exciting possibilities for directly utilizing these photoexcited high-density currents across metallic interfaces for ultrafast electronics and terahertz spectroscopy.

A high-sensitivity DC magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) apparatus is described in this Letter. Via detailed analysis on several dominating noise sources, we have proposed solutions that significantly lower the MOKE noise, and a sensitivity of 1.5×10-7rad/Hz is achieved with long-term stability. The sensitivity of the apparatus is tested by measuring a wedge-shaped Ni thin film on SiO2 with Ni thickness varying from 0 to 3 nm. A noise floor of 1.5×10-8rad is demonstrated. The possibility of further improving sensitivity to 10-9rad via applying AC modulation is also discussed.

The ability to generate and manipulate broadband chiral terahertz waves is essential for applications in material imaging, terahertz sensing, and diagnosis. It can also open up new possibilities for nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy and coherent control of chiral molecules and magnetic materials. The existing methods, however, often suffer from low efficiency, narrow bandwidth, or poor flexibility. Here, we propose a novel type of laser-driven terahertz emitters, consisting of metasurface-patterned magnetic multilayer heterostructures, that can overcome the shortcomings of the conventional approaches. Such hybrid terahertz emitters combine the advantages of spintronic emitters for being ultrabroadband, efficient, and highly flexible, as well as those of metasurfaces for the powerful control capabilities over the polarization state of emitted terahertz waves on an ultracompact platform. Taking a stripe-patterned metasurface as an example, we demonstrate the efficient generation and manipulation of broadband chiral terahertz waves. The ellipticity can reach >0.75 over a broad terahertz bandwidth (1 to 5 THz), representing a high-quality and efficient source for few-cycle circularly polarized terahertz pulses with stable carrier waveforms. Flexible control of ellipticity and helicity is also demonstrated with our systematic experiments and numerical simulations. We show that the terahertz polarization state is dictated by the interplay between laser-induced spintronic-origin currents and the screening charges/currents in the metasurfaces, which exhibits tailored anisotropic properties due to the predesigned geometric confinement effects. Our work opens a new pathway to metasurface-tailored spintronic emitters for efficient vector-control of electromagnetic waves in the terahertz regime.