Xiao et al. demonstrate the generation of nanosecond mid-infrared pulses via fast modulation of thermal emissivity enabled by the absorption of visible pump pulses in unpatterned silicon and gallium arsenide. The free-carrier dynamics in these materials result in nanosecond-scale modulation of thermal emissivity, which leads to nanosecond pulsed thermal emission. To their knowledge, the nanosecond thermal-emissivity modulation in this work is three orders of magnitude faster than what has been previously demonstrated. They also indirectly observed subnanosecond thermal pulses from hot carriers in semiconductors. The experiments are well described by their multiphysics model. Their method of converting visible pulses into the mid infrared using modulated emissivity obeys different scaling laws and can have significant wavelength tunability compared to approaches based on conventional nonlinearities.
