Controlled-source, azimuthal, time-domain, electromagnetic (TDEM) surveys were conducted over a schist formation with uniformly striking, nearly vertical foliation. Direct current electrical resistivity and seismic refraction surveys provided additional independent assessment of the field site. Quantitative interpretation of the TDEM survey used a theoretical electromagnetic model of a vertical transverse anisotropic conducting half-space. The combination of forward modeling and azimuthal acquisition geometry provides an innovative geophysical technique useful for mapping poorly exposed metamorphic terrains, and possibly determining fracture system orientations and assessing anisotropic hydraulic conductivity. Metamorphic rocks may exhibit transverse electrical anisotropy detectable by time-domain electromagnetics due to the characteristics of foliated rocks. For this reason, the field site was chosen within the Packsaddle Schist exposed in Mason County, Texas. Foliation of the Packsaddle Schist at the survey site strikes 146? and dips 82? NE. Polar plots of early-time, TDEM voltages, measured at large transmitter-receiver separations (> 40m) exhibit a symmetric two-lobed curve that agrees with theoretical model responses calculated for a vertical transverse anisotropic half space. The long axis of the symmetric two lobe response function is oriented 137?, which is nearly parallel to schist foliation of 146?. A best-fit forward model to the data indicates the electrical conductivity parallel and perpendicular to foliation are 0.015 S/m and 0.0012 S/m, respectively. Small transmitter-receiver separations (< 40m) exhibit azimuthal responses typical of an isotropic half space, which indicates the presence of a layer overlying the schist probably produced by weathering. An additional independent azimuthal Wenner resistivity survey exhibits apparent resistivity in the form of an ellipse with the major axis (direction of maximum conductivity) oriented 149?, which is nearly parallel to schist foliation of 146?. Analysis of data indicates the apparent electrical conductivity parallel and perpendicular to foliation are 0.0163 S/m and 0.0094 S/m, respectively. Results of TDEM and direct current resistivity closely match in both orientation and electrical conductivity values. Preliminary seismic refraction data were compatible with the TDEM data and also indicated anisotropy, but were not as conclusive.

Relatively little is known about marine controlled-source electromagnetic surveys (MCSEM) used to detect hydrocarbon reservoirs. Typical MCSEM require the use of inversion to generate a model of the subsurface. We utilize a 3D finite-element forward model to simulate a MCSEM survey. With the results we were able to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each transmitter and receiver configuration that would best detect a shallow hydrocarbon target. Careful selection of the correct configuration is important as we have found that incorrect transmitter orientation, offset and receiver measurement component can yield misleading results. Using the ideal configuration we were able to directly image the hydrocarbon target without the use of inversion modeling. The direct image is able to show the hydrocarbon target's shape and edges without any ambiguity. The direct image of the target can potentially be used to refine 3D inversion modeling, or be used in conjunction with seismic profiles to refine seismic picks.

Metamaterials have experienced a rapid growth of interest over the past few years and new capabilities are being explored to broaden the range of their unique electromagnetic properties for functional devices, including tunable, switchable, and nonlinear properties. In the future, there is the prospect of opening even more exciting applications with metamaterials, not yet imagined and thought not to be possible with currently available techniques. In my dissertation, I discuss several solutions for passive and active metamaterials and metasurfaces, with a particular focus on their potential applications, enabling a new class of metamaterials in the spectral range from radio frequencies (RF) and microwaves, terahertz (THz) to visible light. First, I demonstrate that by loading plasmonic nanoantennas with nonlinear nanoparticles, the nonlinear optical processes, such as multiple wave mixing, high harmonic generation, phase conjugation and optical bistability may be realized at the nanoscale, thanks to the strongly enhanced optical near fields accompanied with the plasmonic resonance. I present here the design, practical realization, and homogenization theory of nonlinear optical metamaterials and metasurfaces formed by optical nanoantenna arrays loaded with nonlinearities. As an extreme case of light manipulation at the "atomic" scale, I also study the collective oscillation of massless Dirac fermions inside grapheme monolayers, in which surface plasmon polaritons are controlled by electrostatic gating. I present how a graphene monolayer may serve as a building block and design paradigm for adaptable, switchable and frequency-configurable THz metamaterials and nanodevices, realizing various functionalities for cloaking, sensing, absorbing, switching, modulating, phasing, filtering, impedance transformation, photomixing and frequency synthesis in the THz spectrum. Last I present various metamaterial designs applied to invisibility cloaks based on the scattering cancellation mechanism enabled by plasmonic materials and passive/active metamaterials and metasurfaces. This cloaking technology may be used for camouflaging, enhancing the sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio in RF wireless communication and sensor networks. In addition, electrically-small antennas based on the phase compensation effect offered by metamaterials with low or negative material properties are presented, with tailorable modal frequencies, bandwidth, and radiation properties. / text

<p> In this thesis we generalize and extend the steady-state <i>ab initio </i> laser theory (SALT), first developed by T&uuml;reci and Stone, and apply it problems in laser design. SALT as first formulated modeled the gain medium as identical two-level atoms, leading to the well-known Maxwell Bloch laser equations. The result is a set of coupled non-linear wave equations that treats the openness of the cavity exactly and the non-linear modal interactions to infinite order. Most gain media have more than two atomic levels, and in this thesis we generalize the SALT equations to treat realistic and complex gain media, specifically N-level atomic media with a single lasing transition, N-level atomic media with multiple lasing transitions and semiconductor gain media with particle-hole band excitations. The extension to multiple transitions requires fundamentally enlarging the set of SALT equations, by adding a set of population equations that must be solved self-consistently with the non-linear wave equations for the lasing modes in standard SALT. In addition, the population equation can be generalized to treat gain diffusion, an important problem in a number of laser systems, not treated in SALT or in most earlier laser theories. The semiconductor version (Semi-SALT) includes the continuum of particle-hole transitions and the effect of Pauli blocking of transitions, but is only developed and applied in the free-carrier approximation. The resulting theory is termed complex SALT (C-SALT). We also demonstrate how to incorporate amplification and injected signals naturally within the SALT framework, yielding injection SALT (I-SALT). The generalization to I-SALT leads to a larger set of self-consistent coupled non-linear wave equations, a set for the lasing modes and a set for the injected and amplified fields, coupled through cross gain saturation. It clearly distinguishes the lasing modes, which correspond to poles of the scattering matrix, from the injected fields, which do not; in this limit the locking of a lasing mode corresponds to the injected signal forcing the lasing pole off the real axis, reducing its amplitude to zero. I-SALT is shown to reduce to a version of the standard Adler theory of injection-locked lasing in a certain limit (the single pole approximation).</p><p> We apply SALT to design a highly multimode cavity for use as a spatially incoherent light source for applications to imaging and microscopy. Laser illumination typically leads to coherent artifacts that degrade optical images; this can be alleviated by having a very large number of modes 500) which are spatially independent and average out such artifacts. We used SALT to model a D-shaped laser cavity with chaotic ray dynamics and showed that a certain shape greatly increases the number of lasing modes for the same cavity size and pump strength, due to a flat distribution of Q-values and reduced mode competition. An on-chip electrically-pumped semiconductor laser was realized using this cavity design and showed negligible coherent artifacts in imaging, as well as much better efficiency and power per mode than traditional incoherent light sources such as LEDs.</p><p> The thesis also goes beyond semiclassical laser theory to treat quantum noise and the laser linewidth in a SALT-based approach. We demonstrate that SALT solutions can be used in conjunction with a temporal coupled mode theory (TCMT) to derive an analytic formula for the quantum limited laser linewidth in terms of integrals over SALT solutions. This linewidth formula is a substantial generalization of the well-known Schawlow-Townes result and includes all previously known corrections: the Petermann factor, Henry alpha factor, incomplete inversion factor and the "bad cavity factor". However, unlike previous theories these corrections are not simply multiplicative and are not separable in general. The predictions of TCMT linewidth theory are tested quantitatively by means of an FDTD algorithm that includes the Langevin noise as a source term.</p>

This thesis describes work related to the theme of sculpted electromagnetic fields - engineered fields with particular spatial patterns - and their interactions with molecules. We are motivated by the following questions: what are ways of detecting spatial patterns in electromagnetic fields? What are possible applications of spatially engineered fields? Are there molecular transitions that are dark to plane waves but that can be probed by sculpted fields? The first part of this thesis is in the area of magnetic field effects in chemistry. We focus on magnetic field modulated fluorescence, which provides a convenient method for imaging magnetic field strength. We proposed and demonstrated a fluorescence technique that allows imaging through strongly scattering media. We achieve this by exploiting the fact that most materials do not scatter magnetic field. This allows us to project a magnetic field pattern beyond the scattering surface. The magnetic field dependent fluorescence then allows us to map out the object of interest. We constructed a setup that demonstrates 2D imaging using this technique. We synthesized new molecular systems to enhance the sensitivity to magnetic field. We characterized and compared these molecules with steady state fluorescence spectroscopy, transient fluorescence and transient absorption measurements. The results reveal patterns that point to directions for engineering chemical systems to further enhance their magnetic field sensing properties. The second portion of this thesis is a theoretical study of the molecular multipole transitions and their couplings to local electromagnetic quantities. Using a semiclassical approach, we performed a multipole expansion of molecular transitions driven by monochromatic radiation. We derived the local electromagnetic quantities that couple to different multipole transitions and observables such as circular dichroism and magnetic circular dichroism. It was observed that certain transitions are dark to plane waves, but could be probed by simple spatial arrangements such as superpositions of plane waves. Experiments for their detection are also proposed. / Engineering and Applied Sciences

The vast majority of optical components and devices in use today can be grouped under the umbrella of ``bulk optics''; i.e. they generally have a non-negligible thickness compared to the wavelength of light. This is true of components from lenses to wave plates to Fabry-Perot etalons, all of which need sufficient thickness such that light waves can accumulate an appropriate amount of phase upon propagation through the structure. In this thesis, we develop and explore a variety of optical components that are thin compared to the wavelength of light and lie at the interface between two materials (i.e. a substrate and air). We explore approaches to filter, absorb, redirect, and re-shape light with flat, ultra-thin structures which are easy to fabricate with modern micro- and nanofabrication techniques. / Engineering and Applied Sciences

Graphene is a single atomic layer of graphite and has many extraordinary properties. Many graphene based applications have been proposed in recent years and the need of a time domain simulation tool for studying graphene based devices emerges. This thesis focuses on developing a simulation framework for graphene based devices using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Formulation for a perfectly matched layer (PML) for the sub-cell FDTD method for thin dispersive layers has been derived and implemented. Such a PML is useful when thin layers extend to the boundaries of the computational domain. Using the sub-cell PML formulation to model the graphene thin layers significantly reduces the computational cost compared to using the conventional FDTD. The proposed formulation is accompanied by detailed validation and error analysis studies. Several graphene applications are simulated using the new framework and the results show good agreement with the respective analytical models.

Graphene is a single atomic layer of graphite and has many extraordinary properties. Many graphene based applications have been proposed in recent years and the need of a time domain simulation tool for studying graphene based devices emerges. This thesis focuses on developing a simulation framework for graphene based devices using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Formulation for a perfectly matched layer (PML) for the sub-cell FDTD method for thin dispersive layers has been derived and implemented. Such a PML is useful when thin layers extend to the boundaries of the computational domain. Using the sub-cell PML formulation to model the graphene thin layers significantly reduces the computational cost compared to using the conventional FDTD. The proposed formulation is accompanied by detailed validation and error analysis studies. Several graphene applications are simulated using the new framework and the results show good agreement with the respective analytical models.

<p>Typical imaging systems rely on the interactions of matter with electromagnetic radiation, which can lead to scattered waves that are radiated away from the imaging area. The goal such an imaging device is to collect these radiated waves and focus them onto a measurement detector that is sensitive to the wave's properties such as wavelength (or color) and intensity. The detector's measurements of the scattered fields are then used to reconstruct spatial information about the original matter such as its shape or location. However, when a scattered wave is collected by the imaging device, it diffracts and inteferes with itself. The resulting interference pattern can blur spatial information of the reconstructed image. This leads to a so-called diffraction limit, which describes the minimum sizes of spatial features on a scatterer that can be resolved using conventional imaging techniques. The diffraction limit scales with the wavelength &lambda; of the illuminating field, where the limit for conventional imaging with visible light is approximately 200 nm. Investigating subwavelength objects (< &lambda;) requires more advanced measurement techniques, and improving the resolving capabilities of imaging devices continues to be an active area of research.</p><p>Here, I describe a new sensing technique for resolving the position of a subwavelength scatterer (< &lambda;) with vastly subwavelength resolution (<< &lambda;). My approach combines two separate fields of scientific inquiry: time-delayed nonlinear feedback and wave chaos. In typical time-delayed nonlinear feedback systems, the output of a nonlinear device is delayed and fed back to its input. In my experiment, the output of a radio-frequency (&lambda; ~ 15 cm) nonlinear circuit is injected into a complex scattering environment known as a wave-chaotic cavity. Inside the cavity, the field interacts with a subwavelength dielectric object from all sides, and a portion of the scattered waves are coupled out of the cavity, amplified, and fed back to the input of the nonlinear circuit. The resulting closed-feedback loop generates its own radio-frequency illumination field (> 1 GHz), which contains multiple wavelengths and is sensitive to location of the scattering object. Using the dynamical changes in the illumination field, I demonstrate subwavelength position-sensing of the scatterer's location in the cavity with a one-dimensional resolution of ~&lambda;/10,000 and a two-dimensional resolution of ~ &lambda;/300. </p><p>This novel method demonstrates that the dynamical changes of a feedback oscillator can be exploited for resolving subwavelength spatial features. Unlike conventional imaging techniques, it uses a single scalar measurement of the scattered field and takes advantage of a complex scattering environment. Furthermore, this work demonstrates the first application of quasiperiodic dynamics (oscillations with incommensurate frequencies) from a nonlinear system. Using the key ingredients from my radio-frequency system, I extend my method to an experiment that uses optical frequencies (&lambda; = 1550 nm) to demonstrate subwavelength sensing in two dimensions with a resolution of approximately 10 nm. Because this new sensing technique can be adapted to multiple experiments over vastly different length scales, it represents a potential platform for creating a new class subwavelength imaging devices.</p> / Dissertation

The use of energy harvesting devices has generated much research interests in recent years. There are numerous energy harvesters available in the market that are piezoelectric, electromagnetic, electrostatic or combination of piezoelectric and electromagnetic. Many of the harvesters have shown great potential but are either severely limited in power generation since they are actually never optimized to its potential. One of the goals of this thesis is to develop an electromagnetic micro-energy harvester that is capable of working at low frequencies (5-30 Hz) and is capable of producing electrical power for small devices. Generally, batteries have been used to power low voltage electronics, however the need for self-sustaining and reliable power source have always been a major issue. This project aims to make a harvester of size AA battery that can be used as a reliable and continuous source of power for bio-medical as well as industrial applications. Firstly, a linear harvester is developed for applications where there is no set natural frequency. The linear harvester consists of a stator and a mover. The stator includes copper coils, outer iron case and delrin holder for the coils while the mover consists of permanent magnets, iron pole and cylindrical rod. The working principles developed are used to optimize and improve the efficiency of energy harvesting system. The linear harvesting system is tested with the permanent magnet to iron pole ratio of 1.25 and permanent magnet to coil ratio of 0.73. The power density of the linear harvester is determined to be 4.44e-4 W/cm3. Thereafter, optimization is done in comsol to improve the performance of the energy harvesting system. The optimized magnet to iron ratio is determined to be 3.175 and permanent magnet to coil ratio of 0.7938. The optimized ratios are used to develop an inertial type non-linear energy harvesting device. The structure of the non-linear harvester is same as the linear one except two stationary magnets are added at the top and bottom of the harvester that act as a non-linear spring. The non-linear harvesting device is tested and the power density of the system is determined to be 2.738e-2 W/cm3. The non-linear harvester was tested at acceleration level of 1g and it was determined that the harvester worked best at natural frequency of 8.66 Hz. The maximum power produced was 38.1 mW. The non-linear type of harvester is easy to assemble and optimize to match ambient natural frequency of numerous vibrating systems. Two frequency tuning methods are looked at for the non-linear energy harvesting system. One is by changing the magnetic air gap and the second is by changing the thickness of the stationary top and bottom magnets. It is determined that changing magnetic air gap is more effective at tuning for a range of natural frequencies. For applications where the natural frequency of the system doesn't exist, such as buoys and beacons at sea, the linear energy harvester works best. For applications where the system vibrates at a certain natural frequency, the non-linear harvester should be used. Finally, this thesis is concluded with a discussion on the electromagnetic micro-harvester and some suggestions for further research on how to optimize and extend the functionality of the energy harvesting system.