Transparency in nonlinear frequency conversion

Abstract

Suppression of wave scattering and the realization of transparency effects in engineered optical media and surfaces have attracted great attention in the past recent years. In this work the problem of transparency is considered for optical wave propagation in a nonlinear dielectric medium with second-order $\chi^{(2)}$ susceptibility. Because of nonlinear interaction, a reference signal wave at carrier frequency $\omega_1$ can exchange power, thus being amplified or attenuated,when phase matching conditions are satisfied and frequency conversion takes place. Therefore, rather generally the medium is not transparent to the signal wave because of 'scattering' in the frequency domain. Here we show that broadband transparency, corresponding to the full absence of frequency conversion in spite of phase matching, can be observed for the signal wave in the process of sum frequency generation whenever the effective susceptibility $\chi^{(2)}$ along the nonlinear medium is tailored following a suitable spatial apodization profile and the power level of the pump wave is properly tuned. While broadband transparency is observed under such conditions, the nonlinear medium is not invisible owing to an additional effective dispersion for the signal wave introduced by the nonlinear interaction.