Wave propagation and group velocity

Science and technologies based on terahertz frequency electromagnetic radiation (100 GHz–30 THz) have developed rapidly over the last 30 years. For most of the 20th Century, terahertz radiation, then referred to as sub-millimeter wave or far-infrared radiation, was mainly utilized by astronomers and some spectroscopists. Following the development of laser based terahertz time-domain spectroscopy in the 1980s and 1990s the field of THz science and technology expanded rapidly, to the extent that it now touches many areas from fundamental science to 'real world' applications. For example THz radiation is being used to optimize materials for new solar cells, and may also be a key technology for the next generation of airport security scanners. While the field was emerging it was possible to keep track of all new developments, however now the field has grown so much that it is increasingly difficult to follow the diverse range of new discoveries and applications that are appearing. At this point in time, when the field of THz science and technology is moving from an emerging to a more established and interdisciplinary field, it is apt to present a roadmap to help identify the breadth and future directions of the field. The aim of this roadmap is to present a snapshot of the present state of THz science and technology in 2017, and provide an opinion on the challenges and opportunities that the future holds. To be able to achieve this aim, we have invited a group of international experts to write 18 sections that cover most of the key areas of THz science and technology. We hope that The 2017 Roadmap on THz science and technology will prove to be a useful resource by providing a wide ranging introduction to the capabilities of THz radiation for those outside or just entering the field as well as providing perspective and breadth for those who are well established. We also feel that this review should serve as a useful guide for government and funding agencies.

The 2016 terahertz science and technology roadmap

The growing maturity of integrated photonic technology makes it possible to build increasingly large and complex photonic circuits on the surface of a chip. Today, most of these circuits are designed for a specific application, but the increase in complexity has introduced a generation of photonic circuits that can be programmed using software for a wide variety of functions through a mesh of on-chip waveguides, tunable beam couplers and optical phase shifters. Here we discuss the state of this emerging technology, including recent developments in photonic building blocks and circuit architectures, as well as electronic control and programming strategies. We cover possible applications in linear matrix operations, quantum information processing and microwave photonics, and examine how these generic chips can accelerate the development of future photonic circuits by providing a higher-level platform for prototyping novel optical functionalities without the need for custom chip fabrication. The current state of programmable photonic integrated circuits is discussed, including recent developments in their building blocks, circuit architectures, electronic control and programming strategies, as well as different application spaces.

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8677857/file/8677861.pdf

Programmable photonic circuits.

DOI: 10.1002/adom.201801433 Scientific American selects plasmonic sensing as the top 10 emerging technologies of 2018.[15] Almost every single new plasmonic or photonic structure would be explored to test its sensing ability.[16–29] These works tend to report the sensing performance of their own structure. Some declare that their sensitivity breaks the world record. However, there is still a missing literature on what the world record really is, the gap between the experiments and the theoretical limit, as well as the differences between metal-based plasmonic sensors and dielectric-based photonic sensors. To push plasmonic and photonic sensors into industrial applications, an optical sensing technology map is absolutely necessary. This review aims to cover a wide range of most representative plasmonic and photonic sensors, and place them into a single map. The sensor performances of different structures will be distinctly illustrated. Future researchers could plot the sensing ability of their new sensors into this technology map and gauge their performances in this field. In this review, we focus on optical refractive index (RI) sensors with no fluorescent labeling required. We will utilize two parameters to characterize and compare the performance of optical RI sensors: sensitivity to RI change (denoted by symbol SRI) and figure of merit (in short, FoM). For simplicity, we restrict our discussions to bulk RI change, where the change in RI occurs within the whole sample. There is another case where the RI variation occurs only within a very small volume close to the sensor surface. This surface RI sensitivity is proportional to the bulk RI sensitivity, the ratio of the thickness of the layer within which the surface RI variation occurs, and the penetration depth of the optical mode.[6] The bulk RI sensitivity defines the ratio of the change in sensor output (e.g., resonance angle, intensity, or resonant wavelength) to the bulk RI variations. Here, we limit our discussions to the spectral interrogations and the bulk RI sensitivity SRI is given by[3,5–7,30]

Optical Refractive Index Sensors with Plasmonic and Photonic Structures: Promising and Inconvenient Truth

Lithium niobate (LN), an outstanding and versatile material, has influenced our daily life for decades: from enabling high-speed optical communications that form the backbone of the Internet to realizing radio-frequency filtering used in our cell phones. This half-century-old material is currently embracing a revolution in thin-film LN integrated photonics. The success of manufacturing wafer-scale, high-quality, thin films of LN on insulator (LNOI), accompanied with breakthroughs in nanofabrication techniques, have made high-performance integrated nanophotonic components possible. With rapid development in the past few years, some of these thin-film LN devices, such as optical modulators and nonlinear wavelength converters, have already outperformed their legacy counterparts realized in bulk LN crystals. Furthermore, the nanophotonic integration enabled ultra-low-loss resonators in LN, which unlocked many novel applications such as optical frequency combs and quantum transducers. In this Review, we cover -- from basic principles to the state of the art -- the diverse aspects of integrated thin-film LN photonics, including the materials, basic passive components, and various active devices based on electro-optics, all-optical nonlinearities, and acousto-optics. We also identify challenges that this platform is currently facing and point out future opportunities. The field of integrated LNOI photonics is advancing rapidly and poised to make critical impacts on a broad range of applications in communication, signal processing, and quantum information.

/pdf/integrated-photonics-on-thin-film-lithium-niobate-55z73oui6u.pdf

Integrated photonics on thin-film lithium niobate

In this paper, an step by step efficient design procedure for designing a multilayer absorber using graphene thin films is presented. The absorber design is based on scattering parameters of plasmonic waves propagating on the surface of graphene layers. We have provided appropriate interpretations for designing different features of the absorber including graphene pattern and substrate material. We have also presented a multilayer graphene-based ultrawideband terahertz absorber that is designed using the proposed method. Presented absorber has perfect absorption over 2.7 THz and its central frequency is about 3 THz, which is an acceptable fractional bandwidth ultrawideband absorbers.

Design of a Multilayer Graphene-Based Ultrawideband Terahertz Absorber

In this paper, we report on a novel resonant THz sensor for label-free analysis. The structure consists of a silicon nitride dielectric ring resonator vertically coupled to a thin layer of graphene strip ring resonator on top. The cladding is assumed to be porous alumina on the top of the graphene strip, which enhances the interaction of the surface plasmon wave and the target molecules. Finite difference time domain analysis is used to systematically design the structure and to investigate the performance of the sensor. Our simulations show that the proposed structure has larger refractive index sensitivity and lower intrinsic quality factor with respect to the similar optical structure. It is also shown that the overall performance of the proposed structure in terms of figures of merit is superior to the performance of a similar optical structure. The proposed structure can be used for lab-on-a-chip sensing applications due to its compactness and is capable of being spectrally or spatially multiplexed for multi-analytic sensing.

A Graphene-Based THz Ring Resonator for Label-Free Sensing

Within the last two decades, terahertz systems have become a well-established tool in scientific laboratories and industrial research and development departments. Unlike the methods of pulsed terahertz radiation that mainly rely on ultrafast optical technology, the technology behind continuous-wave terahertz sources and detectors has a long history involving many different types of technical schemes. The intent is to provide a brief review of the continuous-wave terahertz systems that are based on photomixing and current application trends in the field of terahertz technology.

/pdf/review-of-photomixing-continuous-wave-terahertz-systems-and-3a324sdnmx.pdf

Review of photomixing continuous-wave terahertz systems and current application trends in terahertz domain

An electromagnetic feasible adjoint sensitivity technique (EM-FAST) has been proposed recently for use with frequency-domain solvers . It makes the implementation of the adjoint variable approach to design sensitivity analysis straightforward while preserving the accuracy at a level comparable to that of the exact sensitivities. The overhead computations associated with the estimation of the sensitivities in addition to the system analysis are due largely to the calculation of the derivatives of the system matrix. Here, we describe the integration of the EM-FAST with two methods for accelerated estimation of these derivatives: the boundary-layer concept and the Broyden update. We show that the Broyden update approach (Broyden-FAST) leads to an algorithm whose efficiency is problem independent and allows the computation of the response and its gradient through a single system analysis with practically no overhead. Both approaches are illustrated through the design of simple antennas using method of moments solvers.

/pdf/accelerated-gradient-based-optimization-using-adjoint-4mk1eayiji.pdf

Accelerated gradient based optimization using adjoint sensitivities

Integrated optical signal processors, in combination with conventional electrical signal processors, are envisioned to open a path to a new generation of signal processing hardware platform that allows for significant improvement in processing bandwidth, latency, and power efficiency. With its well-known features and potential, silicon photonics is considered as a favorable candidate for the device implementation, particularly with high circuit complexity, and hence has been the focus of the study. As an outlook from the previous discussions on such processors, we are considering new building blocks in the silicon photonics platform for further extending the processor capabilities and adding practical features, particularly the miniaturized devices that enable ultra-dense integration of complex circuits into such processor chips. As enlightening examples, we review here our recent contribution together with representative works from other groups of compact designs of silicon photonics devices that enrich functionalities of processor building blocks such as multiplexing, polarization handling, and optical I/Os. The results shown in this review reflect the significance and maturity of the state-of-the-art photonic fabrication technology and contribute to the implementation of high-capacity, general-purpose optical signal processing functionalities on the chip scale.

Reza Safian

Papers

Design of a Multilayer Graphene-Based Ultrawideband Terahertz Absorber

A Graphene-Based THz Ring Resonator for Label-Free Sensing

Review of photomixing continuous-wave terahertz systems and current application trends in terahertz domain

Accelerated gradient based optimization using adjoint sensitivities

Miniaturized Silicon Photonics Devices for Integrated Optical Signal Processors