Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Discontinuities in technology open new opportunities for those who can exploit them quickly. In the current project, we propose to capitalize on two of our most recent discoveries in intense terahertz (THz) science and technology. First is (i) intense THz radiation from air plasma pumped by intense mid-infrared (MIR) lasers. In particular, we have demonstrated (January 2012) a record 5 MV/cm peak electric field at focus and 0.1% conversion efficiency using this new air-plasma scheme, a fundamental result that can open up a plethora of groundbreaking new applications. Among those is the second finding, where (ii) we observed intense-THz-triggered nitrogen lasing, potentially capable of overcoming THz absorption by air humidity, a long lagging problem which has so far hampered remote non-destructive testing (NDT) at a distance. These scientific findings will allow several Canadian companies to improve considerably the performance of their products, giving them significant advantage over their international competitors. In particular, our first finding will allow a Canadian company to develop streak cameras (a fundamental tool used for measuring ultrafast light pulses) with unprecedented temporal resolution, allowing them to gain an extremely competitive position against its foreign competitors. Our second finding will open new possibilities for THz NDT and on-line chemical detection and analysis, in collaboration with two Canadian companies that are interested in THz spectroscopy and imaging. The technique is based on THz-triggered nitrogen laser, from which we have found that we could extract spectroscopic information of the THz pulse. Since the signal used here will be a nitrogen laser, our new technique will allow an efficient collection of the signal photons for THz spectroscopy (without the need for special collecting optics), thus making remote THz inspection (including THz imaging & spectroscopy) much closer to commercialization.