Mixing of 10-microm radiation in room-temperature Schottky diodes.

Schottky diodes have been used as room-temperature mixers of CO(2)-laser radiation. When a microwave local oscillator signal was introduced directly into the diode, beat notes between lasers separated by up to 69 GHz were observed. At CO(2) frequencies (30 THz) the photon energy exceeds the measured dc nonlinearities, and the device is expected to approach operation as a photon counter rather than a classical resistive mixer.