ERC-2022-POC2  STAR

‘STAR’ aims to develop a detector-less sensing/imaging demonstrator apt to the translation of this technology to industrial end-users. The focus is on providing a compact, low-cost, hyperspectral, nanoscale imaging system, which creates amplitude- and phase-resolved images, employing the not-invasive broadband THz-frequency light of a metrological frequency-comb source, without making use of an external detector. This nanoscope ensures 40-100 nm spatial resolution, >100 times smaller than the THz free-space wavelength, coherent detection and mapping of the THz optical response of materials over the continuous 2-5 THz bandwidth provided by a fully stabilized THz QCL FC, with noise-equivalent-power <10pW/√Hz and fast (<ms/pixel) acquisition rates, far exceeding the performances of commercial time-domain spectroscopy near-field systems