Terahertz@FOTON 

Welcome to the First Terahertz (THz) Laboratory of India since 1998 at TIFR Mumbai.  

To give a brief history of how our laboratory evolved over time we have to go back to the 1990s. India's First Ultrafast Spectroscopy Laboratory was set up by Prof. A. S. Vengurlekar, when he returned back to TIFR from his sabbatical at AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA.  Initially, the laboratory specialized in ultrafast spectroscopy of semiconductors and initiated many pioneering studies of semiconductors, semiconductor quantum heterostructures, and many new nano-structures using optical probes at picosecond times scales. Eventually, it was extended to femtoseconds. The earlier emphasis of studies was on the carrier dynamics in semiconductor nanostructures and bulk crystals.  These materials were studied using techniques like Time-resolved photoluminescence (Upconversion), Nonlinear photoluminescence, Degenerate four-wave mixing, and differential reflectance.

After I joined the laboratory, I started TeraHertz spectroscopy activity and the laboratory developed all the new THz sources, detectors, and homemade spectroscopy setups.  

The laboratory is shared between my group and Prof. Achanta Venu Gopal's group. Prof. Gopal is now the Director of the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi since 2021. His interests are in Plasmonics, Photonic crystals, Single Photon sources, and Optical properties of interfaces.

Supported by a department cleanroom facility and finite difference time domain simulators we design, fabricate, and characterize dielectric and metal-dielectric nanostructures for THz sources, detectors, and several large structures for the THz optics.

THz Spectroscopy: Generation and detection of THz and THz spectroscopy of materials (including chemical as well as biological).

THz Optical Properties of Crystals: THz and nonlinear optical studies of crystals and materials. THz Polarization studies.

THz Plasmonics: Novel plasmonic structures in the THz frequency spectral region to study different properties of naturally occurring materials as well as artificially designed materials e.g. Metamaterials.

Photonic Crystals: Photonic crystal structures for 800nm wavelength region. These are useful for enhancing THz sources and detector performances.

Near Field Scanning THz Microscope (NSTM): This is the latest home-built microscope for the THz studies of Metamaterials as well as different materials which give different scenarios in the Far-field and newer field regions.