We describe a terahertz optical resonator that is ideally suited for highly sensitive and noninvasive refractive-index monitoring. The resonator is formed by machining a rectangular groove into one plate of a parallel-plate waveguide, and is excited using the lowest-order transverse-electric (TE1) waveguide mode. Since the resonator can act as a channel for fluid flow, it can be easily integrated into a microfluidics platform for real-time monitoring. Using this resonator with only a few microliters of liquid, we demonstrate a refractive-index sensitivity of 3.7×105 nm/refractive-index-unit, the highest ever reported in any frequency range.

We have studied the metal-insulator transition in a vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin film using terahertz apertureless near-field optical microscopy. We observe a variation of the terahertz amplitude due to the phase transition induced by an applied voltage across the sample. The change of the terahertz signal is related to the abrupt change of the conductivity of the VO2 film at the metal-insulator transition. The subwavelength spatial resolution of this near-field microscopy makes it possible to detect signatures of micron-scale metallic domains in inhomogeneous VO2 thin films.

We demonstrated extraordinary THz transmission through ring apertures on a metal film. Transmission of 60% was obtained with an aperture-to-area ratio of only 1.4%. We show that the high transmission can be suppressed by over 18 dB with a thin layer of free carriers in the silicon substrate underneath the metal film. This result suggests that CMOS-compatible terahertz modulators can be built by controlling the carrier density near the aperture.

We demonstrate a terahertz multichannel microfluidic sensor based on a parallel-plate waveguide geometry with two independent integrated resonant cavities. The resonant frequency of each cavity exhibits an approximately linear dependence on the index of refraction of the material inside the cavity and each cavity is demonstrated to respond independently with no measurable crosstalk. The sensitivities of the two cavities in terms of the change in resonant wavelength per refractive index unit (RIU) are measured to be 1.21 × 106 nm/RIU and 6.77 × 105 nm/RIU.

We present experimental verification of the possibility of strong subwavelength confinement of the terahertz electric field at the end of a tapered metal wire waveguide. The axial field component at the end of the tapered waveguide shows a lateral confinement that is an order of magnitude greater than an untapered waveguide, and over 100 times greater than the free-space wavelength. The axial component is also strongly confined in the propagation direction, in contrast to the radial field component. Comparison to numerical simulation yields excellent agreement when the effect of the detecting probe is included in the analysis.