Abstract
Abstract Optically resonant dielectric and semiconductor metasurfaces are an emerging and promising area of nanophotonics and light–matter interaction at the nanoscale. Recently, active tuning of the linear response and nonlinear effects of these components has received an increasing amount of interest. However, so far these research directions have remained separated with only few sporadic works that study their combination beginning to appear in the literature. The evolution of nonlinear metasurfaces based on dielectric and semiconductor materials toward reconfigurable and dynamic components could potentially answer the demand of integrated on-chip components that realize essential functionalities such as frequency conversion, active switching, optical isolation, and all-optical routing. This review provides an overview of recent investigations in this field, reviews the main physical phenomena enabling the dynamic control of the nonlinear response and compares the temporal dynamics of the diverse approaches that have been explored so far. Finally, future directions of dynamic nonlinear metasurfaces are outlined.
Highlights
Sub-wavelength nanoparticles made of high refractive index materials support a rich variety of optical resonances enabling strong electric field confinement and local intensity enhancement [1]
This review provides an overview of recent investigations in this field, reviews the main physical phenomena enabling the dynamic control of the nonlinear response and compares the temporal dynamics of the diverse approaches that have been explored so far
Up to 30 dB modulation of THG has been recently predicted in a Salisbury-type, metasurface with an array of plasmonic nanoantennas separated by a metallic backplane by a VO2 thin film [73]. These results show that the integration of PCMs in resonant photonic nanostructures is very promising for dynamic control of nonlinear effects
Summary
Sub-wavelength nanoparticles made of high refractive index materials support a rich variety of optical resonances enabling strong electric field confinement and local intensity enhancement [1]. The transparency of dielectric and semiconductor nanoparticles for incident light allows the incident electric field to permeate the nanostructure and increase laser damage threshold These aspects have been crucial in the field of nonlinear nanophotonics with high refractive index nanoparticles since, from one side, it grants access to the nonlinear response of the whole nanoparticle volume, and, from the other side, it permits using high peak optical intensity to enhance the nonlinear response of the material. Metasurfaces based on high refractive index materials exhibit strong nonlinear optical response that enable generation of a signal at a frequency that is different from the one of the incident beam: i.e. the metasurface acts as an active system that provides signal at a new frequency compared to the input one.
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