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Abstract
In this dissertation, a range of structured materials and devices with unique optical properties are characterized. Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating measurements of pulses reflected from layered dielectrics designed to stretch femtosecond optical pulses by a factor of ~10 are described and results are presented and analyzed. Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) code written in Fortran 90 is used in an investigation of two-beam coupling gain characteristics of hybrid organic-inorganic devices fashioned from a liquid crystal layer sandwiched between two photorefractive windows. Commercial FDTD software is used to investigate electromagnetic properties of various metallic nanostructures including the polarization properties imparted to light scattered by chiral Ag nanostructures, the dependence on morphology of the local field enhancement near the surface of Ag nanorods used for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and the terahertz transmission behavior of Ag nanorods deposited on silicon.