Arya Fallahi

Design of tunable biperiodic graphene metasurfaces

Journal article Design of tunable biperiodic graphene metasurfaces Fallahi, Arya; Perruisseau-Carrier, Julien Published in: Physical Review B (ISSN: 1098-0121), vol. 86, num. 19 College Pk: Amer Physical Soc, 2012 Periodic structures with subwavelength features are instrumental in the versatile and effective control of electromagnetic waves from radio frequencies up to optics. In this paper, we theoretically evaluate the potential applications and performance of electromagnetic metasurfaces made of periodically patterned graphene. Several graphene metasurfaces are presented, thereby demonstrating that such ultrathin surfaces can be used to dynamically control the electromagnetic wave reflection, absorption, or polarization. Indeed, owing to the graphene properties, the structure performance in terms of resonance frequencies and bandwidths changes with the variation of electrostatic bias fields. To demonstrate the applicability of the concept at different frequency ranges, the examples provided range from microwave to infrared, corresponding to graphene features with length scales of a few millimeters down to about a micrometer, respectively. The results are obtained using a full-vector semianalytical numerical technique developed to accurately model the graphene-based multilayer periodic structures under study.

Terahertz-driven linear electron acceleration

The cost, size and availability of electron accelerators are dominated by the achievable accelerating gradient. Conventional high-brightness radio-frequency accelerating structures operate with 30–50 MeV m−1 gradients. Electron accelerators driven with optical or infrared sources have demonstrated accelerating gradients orders of magnitude above that achievable with conventional radio-frequency structures. However, laser-driven wakefield accelerators require intense femtosecond sources and direct laser-driven accelerators suffer from low bunch charge, sub-micron tolerances and sub-femtosecond timing requirements due to the short wavelength of operation. Here we demonstrate linear acceleration of electrons with keV energy gain using optically generated terahertz pulses. Terahertz-driven accelerating structures enable high-gradient electron/proton accelerators with simple accelerating structures, high repetition rates and significant charge per bunch. These ultra-compact terahertz accelerators with extremely short electron bunches hold great potential to have a transformative impact for free electron lasers, linear colliders, ultrafast electron diffraction, X-ray science and medical therapy with X-rays and electron beams.

Fundamental limits and near-optimal design of graphene modulators and non-reciprocal devices

Recent demonstrations of modulators, polarization rotators and isolators have indicated the potential of graphene for photonic applications. The present study investigates the fundamental limits and near-optimal design of graphene modulators and non-reciprocal devices.

Compact electron acceleration and bunch compression in THz waveguides

We numerically investigate the acceleration and bunch compression capabilities of 20 mJ, 0.6 THz-centered coherent terahertz pulses in optimized metallic dielectric-loaded cylindrical waveguides. In particular, we theoretically demonstrate the acceleration of 1.6 pC and 16 pC electron bunches from 1 MeV to 10 MeV over an interaction distance of 20mm, the compression of a 1.6 pC 1 MeV bunch from 100 fs to 2 fs (50 times compression) over an interaction distance of about 18mm, and the compression of a 1.6 pC 10 MeV bunch from 100 fs to 1.61 fs (62 times) over an interaction distance of 42 cm. The obtained results show the promise of coherent THz pulses in realizing compact electron acceleration and bunch compression schemes.

Thin Wideband Radar Absorbers

A procedure for the optimal design of thin wideband radar absorbers is presented. The resulting absorbers are implemented by printing a frequency selective surface on a lossy perforated substrate. A binary hill climbing optimization scheme with random restart is used to find optimal solutions. The method of moments in conjunction with the transmission line method is used to calculate the fitness of structures designed by the optimizer. The optimization procedure is done in two steps in order to find a structure with best performance in terms of both operation bandwidth and angular stability. Three types of lossy substrate are considered: 1) unmodified radar absorbing substrate, 2) substrate with one circular hole per unit cell, and 3) substrate with several circular holes per unit cell. It is shown that by drilling only one hole - with optimized radius - in each unit cell, a %100 improvement in terms of operation bandwidth may be obtained. For the case with several holes per unit cell the observed performance was not as good, which might be due to a too rough optimization.

Manipulation of giant Faraday rotation in graphene metasurfaces

Faraday rotation is a fundamental magneto-optical phenomenon used in various optical control and magnetic field sensing techniques. Recently, it was shown that a giant Faraday rotation can be achieved in the low-THz regime by a single monoatomic graphene layer. Here, we demonstrate that this exceptional property can be manipulated through adequate nano-patterning, notably achieving giant rotation up to 6THz with features no smaller than 100nm. The effect of the periodic patterning on the Faraday rotation is predicted by a simple physical model, which is then verified and refined through accurate full-wave simulations.

Nanostructured Ultrafast Silicon-Tip Optical Field-Emitter Arrays

Femtosecond ultrabright electron sources with spatially structured emission are an enabling technology for free-electron lasers, compact coherent X-ray sources, electron diffractive imaging, and attosecond science. In this work, we report the design, modeling, fabrication, and experimental characterization of a novel ultrafast optical field emission cathode comprised of a large (>100,000 tips), dense (4.6 million tips·cm(-2)), and highly uniform (<1 nm tip radius deviation) array of nanosharp high-aspect-ratio silicon columns. Such field emitters offer an attractive alternative to UV photocathodes while providing a direct means of structuring the emitted electron beam. Detailed measurements and simulations show pC electron bunches can be generated in the multiphoton and tunneling regime within a single optical cycle, enabling significant advances in electron diffractive imaging and coherent X-ray sources on a subfemtosecond time scale, not possible before. At high charge emission yields, a slow rollover in charge is explained as a combination of the onset of tunneling emission and the formation of a virtual cathode.

High-yield, ultrafast, surface plasmon-enhanced, Au nanorod optical field electron emitter arrays

In this work we demonstrate the design, fabrication and characterization of ultrafast, surface-plasmon enhanced Au nanorod photofield emitter arrays. We present a quantitative analysis of charge yield from plasmonic Au nanorod arrays fabricated by high-resolution electron beam lithography and triggered by 35 fs pulses of 800 nm light. We have accurately modeled both the optical field enhancement of Au nanorods in high-density arrays, and electron emission from those nanorods. We have considered the effects of surface plasmon damping induced by metallic interface layers at the substrate/nanorod interface on electron emission. We have identified the peak optical field at which the electron emission mechanism transitions from a 3-photon absorption mechanism to strong-field tunneling emission. Moreover, we have investigated the effects of nanorod array density on nanorod charge yield, including measurement of space-charge effects.

Toward a terahertz-driven electron gun

Femtosecond electron bunches with keV energies and eV energy spread are needed by condensed matter physicists to resolve state transitions in carbon nanotubes, molecular structures, organic salts, and charge density wave materials. These semirelativistic electron sources are not only of interest for ultrafast electron diffraction, but also for electron energy-loss spectroscopy and as a seed for x-ray FELs. Thus far, the output energy spread (hence pulse duration) of ultrafast electron guns has been limited by the achievable electric field at the surface of the emitter, which is 10 MV/m for DC guns and 200 MV/m for RF guns. A single-cycle THz electron gun provides a unique opportunity to not only achieve GV/m surface electric fields but also with relatively low THz pulse energies, since a single-cycle transform-limited waveform is the most efficient way to achieve intense electric fields. Here, electron bunches of 50 fC from a flat copper photocathode are accelerated from rest to tens of eV by a microjoule THz pulse with peak electric field of 72 MV/m at 1 kHz repetition rate. We show that scaling to the readily-available GV/m THz field regime would translate to monoenergetic electron beams of ~100 keV.

Short electron bunch generation using single-cycle ultrafast electron guns

We introduce a solution for producing ultrashort (