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A Compact Broadband Terahertz Range Quarter-Wave Plate

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Abstract

We detail the design and characterization of a terahertz range achromatic quarter-wave plate based on a stack of aligned variable thickness birefringent sapphire discs. The disc thicknesses and relative rotations of the discs are determined through a basin-hopping Monte Carlo thermal annealing routine. The basin-hopping scheme allows an improved refinement of the required thicknesses and rotations to give a predicted phase error from the ideal π/2 of only 0.5%, which is a factor of approximately 6 better than previous efforts. Moreover, the large contrast between extraordinary and ordinary axes of sapphire allows us to greatly decrease the overall optical path length of our wave plate design by approximately a factor of 10 over similar designs based on quartz discs. However, this very same contrast requires very precise tolerances in the milled thicknesses of the discs and their assembly. We detail a method to compensate for differences in the thickness from their calculated ideal values. We have constructed one of our designs and found it similar in performance to other configurations, but with our much more compact geometry.

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Acknowledgments

We thank M. Neshat for sharing data on the index of refraction of sapphire.

Funding

The THz instrumentation development was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through Grant GBMF2628 to NPA and the NSF through DMR-1508645. T.M. was supported by NSF DMR-1352373. LW was also supported by a seed grant from the NSF supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Penn (DMR-1720530).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

    Liang Wu, A. Farid, N. J. Laurita & N. P. Armitage

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Liang Wu

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

    T. Mueller

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  1. Liang Wu
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Correspondence to Liang Wu.

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Wu, L., Farid, A., Laurita, N.J. et al. A Compact Broadband Terahertz Range Quarter-Wave Plate. J Infrared Milli Terahz Waves 41, 642–654 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-020-00686-2

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