Terahertz Imaging and Microscopy

Terahertz waves offer unique opportunities to see matter – and through it. They can penetrate most dielectric materials (polymers, paper, ceramics, textiles, etc.) and provide meaningful contrast and high spatial resolution for many day-to-day practical applications, including industrial environments, quality control, pharmaceutical and biomedical sectors, agri-food industry, defense and security, art conservation etc. Despite all the potential, real-time THz imaging is still challenging due to the lack of sensitive THz cameras. We have been tackling this problem using computational imaging, compressive sensing and spectral encoding. Another challenge is the size of the THz wavelength that limits the spatial resolution (~100 µm at 1 THz). We developed super-resolution microscopy techniques that could enable real-time tabletop THz microscopes.

Select Publications

Toward real-time terahertz imaging
H. Guerboukha, K. Nallappan, and M. Skorobogatiy, Advances in Optics and Photonics 10, (2020).

Exploiting k-space/frequency duality toward real-time terahertz imaging
H. Guerboukha, K. Nallappan, and M. Skorobogatiy, Optica 5 (2018).

Super-Resolution orthogonal deterministic imaging technique for terahertz subwavelength microscopy
H. Guerboukha, Y. Cao, K. Nallappan, and M. Skorobogatiy, ACS Photonics 7 (2020).

Terahertz Communications

As the demand for internet bandwidth continue its ever-growing expansion, current network systems will undergo unprecedented pressure to keep up with the incredible demand. By 2023, it is expected that more than 70% of the global population will have mobile connectivity, while around 2/3 will have internet access. While 5G systems – operating below 100 GHz – are starting to rollout around the world, there is already intense research into exploiting carrier frequencies in the THz band (100 GHz and above) for wireless communications. Communication systems at such high frequencies possess several advantages, including large bandwidths for ultra-high-speed data transmission rates (~Gbit/s). However, several new challenges arise when such small wavelengths. For example, the THz beam is much narrower, which means that beam steerers are required to dynamically point the beam toward the user. Additionally, one can also envision THz networks made of multiple access points working together to cover a large area and connected through low-loss and low-dispersion THz fibers.

Select Publications

Efficient leaky-wave antennas at terahertz frequencies generating highly directional beams
H. Guerboukha, R. Shrestha, J. Neronha, O. Ryan, M. Hornbuckle, Z. Fang, and D. M. Mittleman, Applied physics letters 26 (2020). 

Additive manufacturing of highly reconfigurable plasmonic circuits for terahertz communications
Y. Cao, K. Nallappan, H. Guerboukha, G. Xu, and M. Skorobogatiy, Optica 7 (2020).

Live streaming of uncompressed HD and 4K videos using terahertz wireless links
K. Nallappan, H. Guerboukha, C. Nerguizian, and M. Skorobogatiy, IEEE Access 6, (2018).