Geometric Metasurfaces for Ultrathin Optical Devices

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Fabrication and Measurement of LT-GaAs Photoconductive Antennas and Arrays

This thesis presents the fabrication and measurement of LT-GaAs based terahertz (THz) photo conductive antennas (PCAs) and arrays. The LT-GaAs THz PCAs are fabricated to serve as reference devices to new 2D material black phosphorous (BP) based THz PCAs. The LT-GaAs and BP devices have identical metallic electrodes, allowing for a comparison of emitted THz intensity and bandwidth. All PCAs have been measured using an open bench pulsed time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) system with a usable bandwidth from 0.1-4 THz, pumped with a 780nm Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser. The results have shown LT-GaAs devices outperforming BP devices in signal amplitude and bandwidth at identical DC bias voltages and pump powers. Three other electrode shape designs were achieved: circular, slotted, and fractal, fabricated on LT-GaAs. The effect of electrode shape on the amplitude and bandwidth of the THz pulse has been experimentally characterized. A comparison of all four shapes has shown that the bowtie electrodes provide a nominal increase in pulse amplitude under identical biasing conditions. Further, a polarization study using an x-cut quartz rotator was conducted, validating that all four electrode shapes are highly linearly polarized. Results show that the co-polarized THz pulse is two orders of magnitude greater than the cross-polarized THz pulse. In addition, two element THz PCAs with electrode spacings of 75µm, 150µm, and 300µm have been investigated. A novel feed network using two beam splitters has been designed, and implemented into the existing open bench TDS system. This feed network gives individual control over the position and path length of the beams feeding each elements. Further, a DC bias splitting PCB and switchboard were designed to allow each element to be turned on and off, aiding in laser alignment validation. The measurement of all three devices have shown the array THz pulse having a higher amplitude than either individual element, however, an insignificant effect on the array bandwidth has been observed

Fabrication and Measurement of LT-GaAs Photoconductive Antennas and Arrays

This thesis presents the fabrication and measurement of LT-GaAs based terahertz (THz) photo conductive antennas (PCAs) and arrays. The LT-GaAs THz PCAs are fabricated to serve as reference devices to new 2D material black phosphorous (BP) based THz PCAs. The LT-GaAs and BP devices have identical metallic electrodes, allowing for a comparison of emitted THz intensity and bandwidth. All PCAs have been measured using an open bench pulsed time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) system with a usable bandwidth from 0.1-4 THz, pumped with a 780nm Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser. The results have shown LT-GaAs devices outperforming BP devices in signal amplitude and bandwidth at identical DC bias voltages and pump powers. Three other electrode shape designs were achieved: circular, slotted, and fractal, fabricated on LT-GaAs. The effect of electrode shape on the amplitude and bandwidth of the THz pulse has been experimentally characterized. A comparison of all four shapes has shown that the bowtie electrodes provide a nominal increase in pulse amplitude under identical biasing conditions. Further, a polarization study using an x-cut quartz rotator was conducted, validating that all four electrode shapes are highly linearly polarized. Results show that the co-polarized THz pulse is two orders of magnitude greater than the cross-polarized THz pulse. In addition, two element THz PCAs with electrode spacings of 75µm, 150µm, and 300µm have been investigated. A novel feed network using two beam splitters has been designed, and implemented into the existing open bench TDS system. This feed network gives individual control over the position and path length of the beams feeding each elements. Further, a DC bias splitting PCB and switchboard were designed to allow each element to be turned on and off, aiding in laser alignment validation. The measurement of all three devices have shown the array THz pulse having a higher amplitude than either individual element, however, an insignificant effect on the array bandwidth has been observed

Advanced Circularly Polarised Microstrip Patch Antennas

The thesis describes outcomes of research on advanced circularly polarised antennas. The proposed designs are intended for integration into small mobile devices, therefore low profile and easy manufacturability are key parameters, along with good CP radiation properties. The designs were validated by simulation and measurement, and are also backed by theory and design guidelines. The primary focus is on the development of planar omnidirectional circularly polarised antennas, which are fabricated using multilayer PCB techniques and thus are lightweight and cost-efficient. Unlike in classical microstrip patch antenna designs, the groundplane of the proposed antenna was substantially reduced. This helps to achieve an omnidirectional circular polarisation pattern and miniaturize the antenna, however at the cost of increased feed circuit complexity. The basic design, its advantages and disadvantages are discussed in Section 3. In the next step, the omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna was extended with additional, advanced features. A miniaturized version is investigated, which offers a 20% footprint reduction by folding parts of the patch underneath itself. Further miniaturization is possible by increasing the dielectric constant of the substrate. A method to adjust the omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna performance by trimming four lumped capacitors is also investigated. Manufacturing inaccuracy in large scale production may cause some of the units to radiate outside of the desired frequencies. By integrating four trimmed capacitors into the antenna it can be precisely tuned to the desired band. Simulated results demonstrate this property by trimming the antenna between GPS L1 band (centre frequency at 1.575 GHz) and Galileo/Beidou-2 E2 band (1.561 GHz). Furthermore, a dual-band omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna is presented, which employs slots and capacitor loading to steer the current path of the first and second resonant mode. The design offers a small frequency ratio of 1.182. The methods to obtain a planar omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna have been further advanced to propose a reconfigurable antenna. The beam reconfiguration is capable of rotating it dipole-like radiation pattern around an axis, thus allowing reception or transmission from any spherical angle. The switching method is simple and does not require any semiconductor devices. Finally, a dual circularly polarised antenna is presented, which achieves dual-polarisation by employing even and odd modes in a coplanar waveguide. This technique allows greater flexibility and size reduction of the feed network, as two signals can be transmitted by a single multi-mode transmission line. Simulated results demonstrate this property by trimming the antenna between GPS L1 band (centre frequency at 1.575 GHz) and Galileo/Beidou-2 E2 band (1.561 GHz). Furthermore, a dual-band omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna is presented, which employs slots and capacitor loading to steer the current path of the first and second resonant mode. The design offers a small frequency ratio of 1.182. The methods to obtain a planar omnidirectional circularly polarised antenna have been further advanced to propose a reconfigurable antenna. The beam reconfiguration is capable of rotating it dipole-like radiation pattern around an axis, thus allowing reception or transmission from any spherical angle. The switching method is simple and does not require any semiconductor devices. Finally, a dual circularly polarised antenna is presented, which achieves dual-polarisation by employing even and odd modes in a coplanar waveguide. This technique allows greater flexibility and size reduction of the feed network, as two signals can be transmitted by a single multi-mode transmission line

Liquid Crystal Optics For Communications, Signal Processing And 3-d Microscopic Imaging

This dissertation proposes, studies and experimentally demonstrates novel liquid crystal (LC) optics to solve challenging problems in RF and photonic signal processing, freespace and fiber optic communications and microscopic imaging. These include free-space optical scanners for military and optical wireless applications, variable fiber-optic attenuators for optical communications, photonic control techniques for phased array antennas and radar, and 3-D microscopic imaging. At the heart of the applications demonstrated in this thesis are LC devices that are non-pixelated and can be controlled either electrically or optically. Instead of the typical pixel-by-pixel control as is custom in LC devices, the phase profile across the aperture of these novel LC devices is varied through the use of high impedance layers. Due to the presence of the high impedance layer, there forms a voltage gradient across the aperture of such a device which results in a phase gradient across the LC layer which in turn is accumulated by the optical beam traversing through this LC device. The geometry of the electrical contacts that are used to apply the external voltage will define the nature of the phase gradient present across the optical beam. In order to steer a laser beam in one angular dimension, straight line electrical contacts are used to form a one dimensional phase gradient while an annular electrical contact results in a circularly symmetric phase profile across the optical beam making it suitable for focusing the optical beam. The geometry of the electrical contacts alone is not sufficient to form the linear and the quadratic phase profiles that are required to either deflect or focus an optical beam. Clever use of the phase response of a typical nematic liquid crystal (NLC) is made such that the linear response region is used for the angular beam deflection while the high voltage quadratic response region is used for focusing the beam. Employing an NLC deflector, a device that uses the linear angular deflection, laser beam steering is demonstrated in two orthogonal dimensions whereas an NLC lens is used to address the third dimension to complete a three dimensional (3-D) scanner. Such an NLC deflector was then used in a variable optical attenuator (VOA), whereby a laser beam coupled between two identical single mode fibers (SMF) was mis-aligned away from the output fiber causing the intensity of the output coupled light to decrease as a function of the angular deflection. Since the angular deflection is electrically controlled, hence the VOA operation is fairly simple and repeatable. An extension of this VOA for wavelength tunable operation is also shown in this dissertation. A LC spatial light modulator (SLM) that uses a photo-sensitive high impedance electrode whose impedance can be varied by controlling the light intensity incident on it, is used in a control system for a phased array antenna. Phase is controlled on the Write side of the SLM by controlling the intensity of the Write laser beam which then is accessed by the Read beam from the opposite side of this reflective SLM. Thus the phase of the Read beam is varied by controlling the intensity of the Write beam. A variable fiber-optic delay line is demonstrated in the thesis which uses wavelength sensitive and wavelength insensitive optics to get both analog as well as digital delays. It uses a chirped fiber Bragg grating (FBG), and a 1xN optical switch to achieve multiple time delays. The switch can be implemented using the 3-D optical scanner mentioned earlier. A technique is presented for ultra-low loss laser communication that uses a combination of strong and weak thin lens optics. As opposed to conventional laser communication systems, the Gaussian laser beam is prevented from diverging at the receiving station by using a weak thin lens that places the transmitted beam waist mid-way between a symmetrical transmitter-receiver link design thus saving prime optical power. LC device technology forms an excellent basis to realize such a large aperture weak lens. Using a 1-D array of LC deflectors, a broadband optical add-drop filter (OADF) is proposed for dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) applications. By binary control of the drive signal to the individual LC deflectors in the array, any optical channel can be selectively dropped and added. For demonstration purposes, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) digital micromirrors have been used to implement the OADF. Several key systems issues such as insertion loss, polarization dependent loss, wavelength resolution and response time are analyzed in detail for comparison with the LC deflector approach. A no-moving-parts axial scanning confocal microscope (ASCM) system is designed and demonstrated using a combination of a large diameter LC lens and a classical microscope objective lens. By electrically controlling the 5 mm diameter LC lens, the 633 nm wavelength focal spot is moved continuously over a 48 [micro]m range with measured 3-dB axial resolution of 3.1 [micro]m using a 0.65 numerical aperture (NA) micro-objective lens. The ASCM is successfully used to image an Indium Phosphide twin square optical waveguide sample with a 10.2 [micro]m waveguide pitch and 2.3 [micro]m height and width. Using fine analog electrical control of the LC lens, a super-fine sub-wavelength axial resolution of 270 nm is demonstrated. The proposed ASCM can be useful in various precision three dimensional imaging and profiling applications

Metasurfaces for ultrathin optical devices with unusual functionalities

Metamaterials are artificial materials that are made from periodically arranged structures, showing properties that cannot be found in nature. The response of a metamaterial to the external field is defined by the geometry, orientation, and distribution of the artificial structures. Many groundbreaking discoveries, such as negative refraction, and super image resolution has been demonstrated based on metamaterials. Nevertheless, the difficulty in three-dimensional fabrication, especially when the operating band is located in the optical range, hinders their practical applications. As a two-dimensional counterpart, a metasurface consists of an array of planar optical antennas, which locally modify the properties of the scattered light. Metasurfaces do not require complicated three-dimensional nanofabrication techniques, and the complexity of the fabrication is greatly reduced. Also, the thickness of a metasurface can be deep subwavelength, making it possible to realize ultrathin devices. In this thesis, geometric metasurfaces are utilized to realize a series of optical devices with unusual functionalities. Phase gradient metasurface is used to split the incident light into left-handed polarized (LCP) and right-handed polarized (RCP) components, whose intensities can be used to determine the polarization state of the incident light. Then we propose a method to integrate two optical elements with different functionalities into a single metasurface device, and its overall performance is determined by the polarization of the incident light. After that, a helicity multiplexed metasurface hologram is demonstrated to reconstruct two images with high efficiency and broadband. The two images swap their positions with the helicity reversion of the incident light. Finally, a polarization rotator is presented, which can rotate the incident light to arbitrary polarization direction by using the non-chiral metasurface. The proposed metasurface devices may inspire the development of new optical devices, and expand the applications of metasurfaces in integrated optical systems

Universal imprinting of chirality with chiral light by employing plasmonic metastructures

Chirality, either of light or matter, has proved to be very practical in biosensing and nanophotonics. However, the fundamental understanding of its temporal dynamics still needs to be discovered. A realistic setup for this are the so-called metastructures, since they are optically active and are built massively, hence rendering an immediate potential candidate. Here we propose and study the electromagnetic-optical mechanism leading to chiral optical imprinting on metastructures. Induced photothermal responses create anisotropic permittivity modulations, different for left or right circularly polarized light, leading to temporal-dependent chiral imprinting of hot-spots, namely imprinting of chirality. The above effect has not been observed yet, but it is within reach of modern experimental approaches. The proposed nonlinear chiroptical effect is general and should appear in any anisotropic material; however, we need to design a particular geometry for this effect to be strong. These new chiral time-dependent metastructures may lead to a plethora of applications.Comment: Main (29 pages, 6 figures) and supplemental (46 pages, 35 figures

Dielectrically Loaded Quad-ridge Flared Horns for Ultra Wideband Reflector Feed Applications in Radio Astronomy

Reflector-based radio telescopes are used as tools for observations in both radio astronomy and space geodesy. To observe the weak sources in space, highly sensitive receivers, fronted by optimized reflector feeds, are therefore needed. Wideband and ultra-wideband (UWB) systems enable large continuous frequency bandwidth and reduce the number of receivers that are needed to cover the radio spectrum. Therefore, they are attractive for existing and next generation of reflector arrays such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), Allen Telescope Array (ATA), Deep Synoptic Array (DSA), and the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). To achieve sensitive wideband and UWB performance with reflector feeds, a near-constant beamwidth and good impedance match are required over large frequency bands. The quad-ridge flared horn (QRFH) is a robust and compact UWB feed technology for this purpose, and is easily designed with single-ended excitation for 50-Ohm ports. The QRFH is dual-linear polarized and can typically achieve good performance up to 6:1 bandwidth with high band-average aperture efficiency and good impedance match. A drawback in existing state-of-the-art QRFH designs, is that they suffer from gradually narrowing beamwidth and increasing cross-polarization in the upper part of the frequency band. This is especially challenging for QRFHs that are designed to illuminate deep reflector geometries. The narrowing beamwidth leads to reduced aperture efficiency, and therefore also reduced sensitivity. To meet the demand for high sensitivity observations over large bandwidths, these challenges need to be addressed.This thesis introduces and investigates low-loss, dielectric loading of the QRFH design to achieve ultra-wideband performance that reaches beyond decade bandwidth exemplified with 20:1 bandwidth in one single QRFH. The dielectric load is homogeneous, with a small and non-intrusive footprint and improves the beamwidth performance over the frequency band, while keeping the complexity low and the QRFH footprint compact. Keeping the QRFH robustness and compact footprint is favorable for practical receiver installation in real-world applications for radio observations. Three quad-ridge designs with dielectric loading are investigated, both for room temperature and cryogenic applications, and are shown to be highly suitable for wideband operation in existing and future reflector arrays

Analysis and synthesis of leaky-wave devices in planar technology

[ESP] ] El trabajo llevado a cabo durante la realización de esta tesis doctoral, se ha centrado en el análisis y síntesis de dispositivos de microondas en tecnología planar. En concreto, se han estudiado diferentes tipos de dispositivos basados en radiación por ondas de fuga "leaky waves", en los cuales las propiedades de radiación están determinadas por la constante de fase del modo "leaky" que es el que determina el ángulo de apuntamiento y por la tasa de radiación que es la que determina la intensidad de los campos radiados. De esta manera, controlando en amplitud y fase el modo "leaky" se puede obtener un control efectivo sobre el diagrama de radiación del dispositivo. Además, con el objetivo de poder obtener de una manera más eficiente las características de propagación de los modos de fuga "leaky" en función de los principales parámetros geométricos de la estructura, se han desarrollado diversas herramientas de análisis modal basadas en la técnica de resonancia transversa de la estructura. La capacidad para obtener un control simultáneo de la constante de propagación compleja del modo "leaky", ha sido demostrada mediante el diseño y fabricación de varios tipos de antena "leaky wave" (LWA) y de otros dispositivos como multiplexores y sistemas de enfoque en campo cercano. Para ello, se ha utilizado la tecnología planar de guía de onda integrada en sustrato (susbstrate integrated waveguide, SIW). Esta recientemente desarrollada tecnología, permite diseñar dispositivos de microondas basados en tecnología clásica de guía de ondas con sistemas de fabricación estándar usados en tecnología de circuitos impresos (printed circuit board, PCB). De esta forma, se pueden integrar en un mismo sustrato muchas de las diferentes partes que forman un sistema de comunicaciones, mejorando así su robustez y compactibilidad, además de reducir el coste y de contar con menores pérdidas que otras tecnologías planares como la microstrip. [ENG] The work developed along this doctoral thesis has been focused on the analysis and synthesis of microwave devices in planar technology. In particular, several types of devices based on the radiation mechanism of leaky waves have been studied. Typically, the radiation properties in leaky-wave devices are determined by the complex propagation constant of the leaky mode, wherein the phase constant is responsible for the pointing angle and the leakage rate for the intensity of the radiated fields. In this manner, by controlling both amplitude and phase of the leaky mode, an effective control over the device's radiation diagram can be obtained. Moreover, with the purpose of efficiently obtaining the leaky mode's radiation properties as function of the main geometrical parameters of the structure, several modal tools based on the transverse resonance analysis of the structure have been performed. In order to demonstrate this simultaneous control over the complex propagation constant in planar technology, several types of leaky-wave devices, including antennas (LWAs), multiplexors and near-field focusing systems, have been designed and manufactured in the technology of substrate integrated waveguide (SIW). This recently proposed technology, allows the design of devices based on classical waveguide technology with standard manufacturing techniques used for printed circuit board (PCB) designs. In this way, most of the parts that form a communication system can be integrated into a single substrate, thus reducing its cost and providing a more robust and compact device, which has less losses compared to other planar technologies such as the microstrip.Universidad Politécnica de Cartagen