Abstract-Efficient measurement of broadband terahertz optical activity

Daniel J. Aschaffenburg¹, Michael R. C. Williams¹, Diyar Talbayev¹, Daniel F. Santavicca²,Daniel E. Prober², and Charles A. Schmuttenmaer¹

¹Department of Chemistry, Yale University, P.O. Box 208107, 225 Prospect St., New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8107, USA 

http://apl.aip.org/resource/1/applab/v100/i24/p241114_s1?isAuthorized=no

We report a method to determine the four Stokes parameters of each spectral component in a broadband terahertz (THz) pulse by using a continuously rotating analyzer and a standard THz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) instrument. A complete characterization of the polarization state at each frequency is obtained through a single time-domain measurement. Our method requires no specialized THz emitters or detectors; it is, therefore, perfectly general and suitable for any existing THz-TDS apparatus.