The aimof this thesis is to investigate the impact of symmetry on light and how it alters its characteristics. Our research centers around the examination of complex photonic crystals rooted in the concept of photonic topological insulators, which are analogs of topological insulators initially introduced in condensed matter physics. Unlike typical insulating materials, these possess a unique ability to conduct along their surface or edges. Leveraging this fundamental property, photonic topological insulators have gained attention for designing transport circuits resistant to back-reflection and scattering mechanisms....

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) is an extremely useful method to probe material electrodynamics. The THz regime comprises rich physics, enabling to determine compositional, electronic and vibronic degrees of freedom through THz spectroscopy of a material under study. However, to study nanometre size thin films with THz-TDS, we need to overcome a large mismatch in length scales, since the THz wavelength is on the order of millimeters. A solution lies in the THz probing of metasurfaces, artificial materials made of conductive structures with length scales much smaller than the probing wavelength. Such a metamaterial induces enhanced electromagnetic field strengths near the surface, enabling nonlinear spectroscopy without the need for strong-field terahertz sources. Additionally, they provide sensitivity to the local (micron-scale) electrodynamic environment. In the ideal case, one can infer significant information about the thin film electrodynamics via the resonance frequency and dissipation in the metasurface. This thesis project comprises the optimization of terahertz (THz) resonant electric split ring resonator (eSRR) metasurfaces for enhanced-light matter coupling, suitable for material characterization. Experimental characterization is combined with finite element simulations, to obtain the transmission spectra and near-field electric, magnetic fields and current densities. In simulation, the eSRR design is optimized to obtain an up to four times stronger response at resonance than the designs described in literature. The optimized design is studied on different substrates, revealing the ability to extract a resonance even close to a substrate Reststrahlen band. This thesis concludes with characterization of the metal-insulator transition of transition metal oxide NdNiO3. From the resonance frequency and quality factor it is possible to track this phase transition from time-domain terahertz spectroscopy, thereby revealing the ability to probe extremely thin films, with an outlook on out of equilibrium studies.

In this study, ultrathin films of the itinerant 4d ferromagnet SrRuO3 were epitaxially deposited on SrTiO3 and capped with a thin LaAlO3 layer. Top gates and a dielectric layer were patterned onto contacted films and magnetotransport properties were characterized at low temperatures as a function of top gate voltage. A particular focus was placed on the anomalous Hall resistivity. The magnitude of the Hall signal and the sheet resistance were shown to vary with top gate voltage. In particular, the anomalous Hall loops were compared to numerical tight-binding models. The model is proposed as an alternate explanation to the skyrmion picture and as a complement to the two-channel phenomenological model put forth to explain the unusual low-temperature anomalous signal of ultrathin SrRuO3 . Model predictions were found to be valid at
low temperatures in semiconducting Ru-deficient SrRuO3 films.

This thesis is an experimental investigation of the physical properties of different transition metal oxide ultra-thin films. A common feature of these various materials and structures is that they exhibit a solid-state phase transition from a metallic to an insulating state, which is triggered upon changing sample composition, or by varying an external stimulus such as temperature, illumination or gas pressure. The experiments performed cover a broad spectrum of condensed matter, from material growth, structural characterisation and nanodevice fabrication to low-temperature magnetotransport, synchrotron microscopy and gas sensing.