Abstract-Impact of pump wavelength on terahertz emission of a cavity-enhanced spintronic trilayer

 

Applied Physics Letters

R. I. Herapath,  S. M. Hornett,   T. S. Seifert, G. Jakob,  M. Kläui,  J. Bertolotti, T. Kampfrath,  E. Hendry

Schematic of a spintronic trilayer with added dielectric cavity, grown on 0.5 mm of sapphire (Al2O3). The near-infrared pump pulse, incident through the substrate, is partially absorbed in the metallic layers, launching a spin current from the ferromagnetic (FM) layer into the nonmagnetic (NM) layers. The inverse spin Hall effect converts this ultrashort out-of-plane spin current into an in-plane charge current resulting in the emission of THz radiation into the optical far-field. A weak in-plane magnetic field (B) determines the magnetization direction and the linear polarization of the emitted THz field.

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.5048297

We systematically study the pump-wavelength dependence of terahertz pulse generation in thin-film spintronic THz emitters composed of a ferromagnetic CoFeB layer between adjacent nonmagnetic W and Pt layers. We find that the efficiency of THz generation is essentially flat for excitation by 150 fs pulses with center wavelengths ranging from 900 to 1500 nm, demonstrating that the spin current does not depend strongly on the pump photon energy. We show that the inclusion of dielectric overlayers of TiO2 and SiO2, designed for a particular excitation wavelength, can enhance the terahertz emission by a factor of up to two in field.

Abstract-Non-invasive, near-field terahertz imaging of hidden objects using a single pixel detector

R. I. Stantchev, B. Sun, S. M. Hornett, P. A. Hobson, G. M. Gibson, M. J. Padgett, E. Hendry

http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03138#

Terahertz (THz) imaging has the ability to see through otherwise opaque materials. However, due to the long wavelengths of THz radiation ({\lambda}=300{\mu}m at 1THz), far-field THz imaging techniques are heavily outperformed by optical imaging in regards to the obtained resolution. In this work we demonstrate near-field THz imaging with a single-pixel detector. We project a time-varying optical mask onto a silicon wafer which is used to spatially modulate a pulse of THz radiation. The far-field transmission corresponding to each mask is recorded by a single element detector and this data is used to reconstruct the image of an object placed on the far side of the silicon wafer. We demonstrate a proof of principal application where we image a printed circuit board on the underside of a 115{\mu}m thick silicon wafer with ~100{\mu}m ({\lambda}/4) resolution. With subwavelength resolution and the inherent sensitivity to local conductivity provided by the THz probe frequencies, we show that it is possible to detect fissures in the circuitry wiring of a few microns in size. Imaging systems of this type could have other uses where non-invasive measurement or imaging of concealed structures with high resolution is necessary, such as in semiconductor manufacturing or in bio-imaging.