Felipe successfully defended his PhD Proposal on August 25, 2011.

TITLE:
Modeling and design of waveguide structures for generation of terahertz pulses through optical rectification

ABSTRACT:
In this work I propose to develop theoretical models to study the generation of broadband terahertz (THz) pulses through optical rectification (OR) of an input infrared (IR) femtosecond (fs) pulse in waveguide structures composed of a layer of poled electro-optic (EO) polymers embedded within dielectric cladding layers and possibly metal capping layers. The main goal is to be able to predict the generated THz bandwidth for given input pulse characteristics (pulsed duration, pulse shape, transverse mode profile, etc) and waveguide structure composition (geometrical dimensions and the optical properties of the waveguide composites). The models should also allow to optimize the output bandwidth through variation of the waveguide dimensions and its predictions should agree and somehow correlate to the experimental data of already built waveguide structures.