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Fall 2021

Hough, Cameron M.

Terahertz (THz) radiation is a non-ionizing form of electromagnetic (EM) energy that occupies a broad frequency region at the interface between conventional microwave and infrared bands. The strong coupling between THz excitations and natural oscillatory dynamics in biological systems has...

Fall 2023

McDowell, Aran J. N.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a method of material analysis used to determine the composition of a sample by ablating it with an ultrafast laser pulse. By monitoring the light emission from the resulting plasma, the elemental composition of the sample and the concentration of...

Spring 2019

Jelic, Vedran

The combination of ultrafast laser pulses with atomic resolution microscopy has been actively pursued for the last few decades. Its achievement unlocks a new age in modern science where the fundamental interactions between individual atoms and molecules can be investigated at their intrinsic...

Fall 2016

Purschke, David N

Over the last 5 years, tilted pulse-front terahertz (THz) generation has opened the door to new studies of nonlinear dynamics in a variety of materials. With access to strong electric fields that turn on and off over picosecond timescales exciting new possibilities exist to control light-matter...

Spring 2024

Nguyen, Peter H

THz optics and scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques have gone through several decades of development, enabling numerous research studies and applications related to ultrafast phenomena at the nanoscale. Advancements in THz technology enable physical processes in materials to be identified...

Fall 2021

Simpson, Howe

The advent of the terahertz scanning tunneling microscope (THz-STM) brings with it a new method of observing and characterizing the ultrafast dynamics of materials. The sub-nanometer spatial resolution of an ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscope (UHV-STM) coupled with the sub-picosecond...

Spring 2024

Marin Calzada, Jesus Alejandro

Scanning probe microscopes routinely provide atomic resolution of numerous materials, but lack the tools to investigate their ultrafast dynamics. Laser pulses can be generated in the femtosecond or even attosecond regime, but their spatial application is restricted by the diffraction limit....

Fall 2017

Jensen, Charles E

Ultrafast terahertz (THz) microscopy is an emerging field of research that leverages the imaging of picosecond electric field transients to explore free carrier responses from a near-field perspective. This thesis presents the first effort made to use an electro-optic imaging system to probe the...

Fall 2021

Purschke, David N

Ultrafast terahertz (THz) spectroscopy is presently the most powerful tool available to materials scientists for directly probing ultrafast conductivity dynamics. Its low center frequency and phase-resolved measurement, which yields sub-picosecond temporal resolution, make it ideally suited for...

Fall 2013

Xu, Sijia

Terahertz spectroscopy is a powerful non-contact technique to study the optical and electric properties of materials at sub-picosecond time scales. In this study, ultrafast time-resolved terahertz spectroscopy was performed on both silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) and iron pyrite (FeS2) nano-crystalline...