Electrically tunable third-harmonic generation using intersubband polaritonic metasurfaces

Abstract

Nonlinear intersubband polaritonic metasurfaces, which integrate giant nonlinear responses derived from intersubband transitions of multiple quantum wells (MQWs) with plasmonic nanoresonators, not only facilitate efficient frequency conversion at pump intensities on the order of few tens of kW cm-2 but also enable electrical modulation of nonlinear responses at the individual meta-atom level and dynamic beam manipulation. The electrical modulation characteristics of the magnitude and phase of the nonlinear optical response are realized through Stark tuning of the resonant intersubband nonlinearity. In this study, we report, for the first time, experimental implementations of electrical modulation characteristics of mid-infrared third-harmonic generation (THG) using an intersubband polaritonic metasurface based on MQW with electrically tunable third-order nonlinear response. Experimentally, we achieved a 450% modulation depth of the THG signal, 86% suppression of zero-order THG diffraction tuning based on local phase tuning exceeding 180 degrees, and THG beam steering using phase gradients. Our work proposes a new route for electrically tunable flat nonlinear optical elements with versatile functionalities.