ORC Seminar Series

Speakers:Dr Markus Walther and Andreas Bitzer, Department of Molecular and Optical Physics, University of Freiburg, Germany

Date: Friday, 23 January

Time: 11.00 - 12.00

Venue: B2/1039 (L/T K, School of Management)

Abstract

Metamaterials constructed from subwavelength resonator structures exhibit unprecedented electromagnetic properties which are based on the microscopic electric and magnetic response of their constituting elements to an incident light wave. As a result artificial media make possible various exciting new applications such as perfect lensing or invisibility cloaking. An experimental characterization of the involved electric and in particular the magnetic near-fields which are localized to the microscopic building blocks of the metamaterial remains highly challenging and current studies rely almost entirely on numerical simulations. We have developed a novel terahertz near-field imaging approach which allows to perform spatially resolved measurements of the amplitude, phase and polarization of the electric near-fields in planar metamaterials within a spectral window between 50 GHz and 3 THz. This allows to extract the microscopic electromagnetic signatures in the near-field responsible for their unprecedented far-field characteristics.

Biography

Andreas Bitzer received the diploma degree from the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 2006. In 2006 he stayed as a guest scientist at the Research Center COM at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Lyngby, Denmark. He is currently working on his Ph.D. thesis at the Terahertz Research Group in the Department of Molecular and Optical Physics at the Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany. His current interests include spatially resolved near-field investigations with terahertz time-domain spectroscopy of metamaterials, plasmonic devices and wave guides.

Markus Walther received the diploma and Ph.D.degree from the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 1999 and 2003, respectively. In 2003 he has been with the Laser Physics Group at the University of Toronto, Canada before he spent two years as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Since 2006 he is leading the Terahertz Research Group in the Department of Molecular and Optical Physics at the Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany.