Time-frequency analysis of THz-time domain spectroscopy data

This text investigates THz-TDS signals in the time-frequency domain. Addi- tionally this text discusses the prospects of using time-frequency analysis to alleviate distortion in THz spectrographic characterizations induced by back- reflections in the free space electro optic sampling used in the THz time-domain spectroscopy detection scheme. THz time domain spectroscopy is a technique for characterization of materials in the terahertz regime. The THz regime offers interesting properties of materials such as strong phonon-photon interaction and resonances for vibration states of molecules. Three time-frequency representations are compared for the analysis of the time-domain signal, the short-time Fourier transform, the Wigner-Ville transform and the continuous wavelet transform. It is concluded that the Wigner-Ville transform is most suited for analysis of the spectral properties of a single pulse due to the Wigner-Ville transforms inherit high spectral resolution. The continuous wavelet transform is most suited for analysis of the time-domain signal since it has no cross-term interference as compared to the Wigner-Ville transform. By masking the continuous wavelet transform with a Lorentzian time-frequency mask the back-reflections are dampened and the resolution of the characterization is improved