Alessandro Tomasino, Diego Caraffini and Holger Breitenborn have been awarded with the Mitacs Accelerate Grant.

Alessandro Tomasino  PhD Student in the Nonlinear Photonics group received  received a Mitacs PhD internship for his project “Tailoring few-cycle pulses: Terahertz time-domain differentiator”. The main technical objective of the project is the first demonstration and realization of a THz pulse Differentiator integrated device operating within the THz frequency range, devoted to real-time next generation signal-processing techniques.

Diego Caraffini PhD Student in the Nonlinear Photonics group received a Mitacs PhD fellowship for his project “Fully-coherent Terahertz Detection via Biased Nonlinear Micro-slit”.   This project is concerned with the development of a novel commercial product based on a Air-Biased Coherent Detection (ABCD) scheme which will open new perspectives for implementing innovative detection techniques for broadband terahertz detection (>12 THz), while commercially available solutions nowadays are commonly limited to a narrow spectrum (<3-4 THz). The simplicity of our concept may well lead to the cost performance and mass-reproducible characteristics, prerequisite to successful commercialization. The new implementation of the ABCD scheme is relying on coherent THz characterization based on THz Field Induced Second Harmonic effect in thin Silica samples, operating with few hundred volt sources. The underlying idea of our work is to exploit the large breakdown voltage and the high nonlinearity of glass, to drastically reduce the electrodes gap, thus achieving a large signal to noise ratio detection with a very weak optical probe at moderate bias fields for low photons applications.

Holger Breitenborn Master Student in the Nonlinear Photonics group received a Mitacs PhD fellowship for his project Terahertz “Teramometry” for Diverse Applications. The project is motivated by the fact that two out of five Canadians are expected to develop cancer and one out of four Canadians is expected to die from cancer. For treatment of Melanoma, a dangerous skin cancer, plasmonic photo-thermal therapy can be applied for precisely localized plasmonic heating of gold nanoparticles to kill cancer. One of the major challenges in heating applications involves precise temperature measurements. Current approaches are inconvenient, inaccurate, or costly. Terahertz radiation can be used for precise temperature sensing and imaging of the cancer area and, thus, the plasmonic heating can be tailored to exceed the critical temperature for cellular death of the cancer. The project builds on innovations in plasmonics, Terahertz, and nanomaterials design to develop a system encompassing state-of-the-art heating/imaging/temperature sensing techniques.