Heterodyne mixing of millimetre electromagnetic waves and sub-THz sound in a semiconductor device.

We demonstrate heterodyne mixing of a 94 GHz millimetre wave photonic signal, supplied by a Gunn diode oscillator, with coherent acoustic waves of frequency ~100 GHz, generated by pulsed laser excitation of a semiconductor surface. The mixing takes place in a millimetre wave Schottky diode, and the intermediate frequency electrical signal is in the 1-12 GHz range. The mixing process preserves all the spectral content in the acoustic signal that falls within the intermediate frequency bandwidth.