Terahertz substance imaging by waveform shaping

Abstract

Terahertz pulse shaping technique is used to adaptively design terahertz waveforms of enhanced spectral correlation to particular materials among a given set of materials. In a proof-of-principle experiment performed with a two-dimensional image target consisted of meta-materials of distinctive resonance frequencies, the as-designed waveforms are used to demonstrate terahertz substance imaging. It is hoped that this material-specific terahertz waveforms may enable single-or few-shot terahertz material classification when being used in conjunction with terahertz power measurement. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America