Carbon nanotube clusters may give greater output power with large tunable bandwidth from photomixing in laser-assisted field emission

Photomixing in laser-assisted field emission can readily cause a mixer current with a peak value that is 10% of the dc current, because of a resonance in the response and the intensification of the optical radiation by the antenna effect of the tip. It is concluded that photomixing in laser-assisted field emission acts as a constant current source, producing a mixer current that is independent of the impedance which is seen by this current. However, this impedance causes an electric field at the mixer frequency to also be present at the tip, and this field causes a second field emission current at the mixer frequency which opposes the mixer current.