What is Terahertz?
Terahertz means a trillion cycles a second. Most often, the phrase is applied to terahertz radiation, electromagnetic radiation that has a frequency of about a trillion cycles per second. The term could also apply to anything that happens a trillion times a second, like certain atomic vibrations or futuristic computers with clock speeds several hundred times faster than today’s. In technology and industry, terahertz waves are of great interest because this portion of the spectrum is one of the hardest to generate and is just beginning to be exploited. Terahertz radiation is sometimes considered a subset of infrared radiation. The terahertz portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is defined as radiation with a frequency between between 300 gigahertz (3×1011 Hz) and 3 terahertz (3×1012 Hz), corresponding to wavelengths between 1 millimeter and 100 micrometers. This puts terahertz waves between long-wavelength infrared and short-wavelength microwave radiation. For their wavelength below a
