Terahertz wave near-field compressive imaging with a spatial resolution of over λ/100

We demonstrate terahertz (THz) wave near-field imaging with a spatial resolution of ∼4.5  μm using single-pixel compressive sensing enabled by femtosecond-laser (fs-laser) driven vanadium dioxide (VO₂)-based spatial light modulator. By fs-laser patterning a 180 nm thick VO₂ nanofilm with a digital micromirror device, we spatially encode the near-field THz evanescent waves. With single-pixel Hadamard detection of the evanescent waves, we reconstructed the THz wave near-field image of an object from a serial of encoded sequential measurements, yielding improved signal-to-noise ratio by one order of magnitude over a raster-scanning technique. Further, we demonstrate that the acquisition time was compressed by a factor of over four with 90% fidelity using a total variation minimization algorithm. The proposed THz wave near-field imaging technique inspires new and challenging applications such as cellular imaging.