Terahertz probing of sunflower leaf multilayer organization

Abstract

We analyze the multilayer structure of sunflower leaves from Terahertz data measured in the time-domain at a ps scale. Thin film reverse engineering techniques are applied to the Fourier amplitude of the reflected and transmitted signals in the frequency range f < 1.5 Terahertz (THz). Validation is first performed with success on etalon samples. The optimal structure of the leaf is found to be a 8-layer stack, in good agreement with microscopy investigations. Results may open the door to a complementary classification of leaves.