Development of a wavefront sensor for terahertz pulses

Emmanuel Abraham (1) , Harsono Cahyadi (2) , Mathilde Brossard (1, 3) , Jérôme Degert (1) , Eric Freysz (1) , Takeshi Yasui (2)

1 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine
2 Institute of Technology and Science (Tokushima)
3 NeTHIS - New Terahertz Imaging Systems

Wavefront characterization of terahertz pulses is essential to optimize far-field intensity distribution of time-domain (imaging) spectrometers or increase the peak power of intense terahertz sources. In this paper, we report on the wavefront measurement of terahertz pulses using a Hartmann sensor associated with a 2D electro-optic imaging system composed of a ZnTe crystal and a CMOS camera. We quantitatively determined the deformations of planar and converging spherical wavefronts using the modal Zernike reconstruction least-squares method. Associated with deformable mirrors, the sensor will also open the route to terahertz adaptive optics.

Mots clés: Remote sensing and sensors; Terahertz imaging; Wave propagation

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Emmanuel Abraham, Harsono Cahyadi, Mathilde Brossard, Jérôme Degert, Eric Freysz, et al.. Development of a wavefront sensor for terahertz pulses. Optics Express, 2016, 24 (5), pp.5203-5211. ⟨10.1364/OE.24.005203.v002⟩. ⟨hal-01297343⟩