Peak Pump Intensity Research Articles

Polarization-controlled third harmonic generation by quasi-bound states in the continuum in silicon nanopillar metasurfaces

All-dielectric metasurfaces have received widespread attention due to their low intrinsic loss compared to the metallic counterparts. However, relatively high radiation loss and low quality (Q) factor of the dielectric nanostructures may significantly degrade their nonlinear optical efficiency. Here, we demonstrate that silicon-nanopillar-based metasurfaces supporting quasi bound states in the continuum (BICs) can greatly enhance the efficiency of third harmonic generation (THG). We show that symmetry-protected BICs form at the Γ-point of doubly degenerate band or nondegenerate band can be selectively transformed into quasi BIC through symmetry breaking of our silicon metasurfaces. Benefiting from the high Q and resonance enhancement by the quasi BICs, the THG conversion efficiencies of the silicon metasurface reaches 4.3 × 10-4 with a peak pump intensity of 1.3 GW/cm2, which can be four orders higher than that of a silicon planar film with the same thickness. In addition, the THG intensity is polarization-dependent for the single quasi BIC while it is polarization-independent for the doublet quasi BIC. Our results provide a new strategy for the design of high-efficiency silicon-based optical nonlinear devices.

Realizing high-efficiency third harmonic generation via accidental bound states in the continuum.

The bound states in the continuum (BICs) have attracted much attention in designing metasurface due to their high Q-factor and effectiveness in suppressing radiational loss. Here we report on the realization of the third harmonic generation (THG) at a near-ultraviolet wavelength (343 nm) via accidental BICs in a metasurface. The absolute conversion efficiency of the THG reaches 1.13 × 10-5 at a lower peak pump intensity of 0.7 GW/cm2. This approach allows the generation of an unprecedentedly high nonlinear conversion efficiency with simple structures.

Polarization-insensitive and polarization-controlled dual-band third-harmonic generation in silicon metasurfaces driven by quasi-bound states in the continuum

High-refractive-index nanostructures offer versatile opportunities for nonlinear optical effects, due to their ability to strongly confine field into a subwavelength scale. Herein, we propose a rhomboidal amorphous silicon metasurface to realize high-efficiency dual-band third-harmonic generation (THG), based on the supported dual quasi-bound states in the continuum (Q-BICs). Owing to the very large field confinement inside the metasurface empowered by Q-BICs, the THG efficiency up to 3.74 × 10−3 with the peak pump intensity of 30 MW/cm2 is observed. Meanwhile, thanks to the very high quality factor of Q-BICs, the ultra-narrow nonlinear process with the full width at half maximum less than 1 nm is also witnessed, suggesting the good monochromaticity. Interestingly, the dual-band THG is verified to be polarization-dependent and polarization-insensitive, respectively. The finite element method simulations exhibit that the polarization-dependent THG is attributed to the Q-BIC driven by the electric quadrupole characterized by a pair of anti-parallel electric dipoles along the x axis, which are only excited by the x-linearly polarized light. On the contrary, the polarization-insensitive THG is enabled by another Q-BIC governed by the magnetic dipole resonance with circular electric field vectors, which can be excited by any linearly polarized light. The polarization-controlled and polarization-independent dual-band THG enabled by the physics of Q-BICs would open possibilities for designing switchable nonlinear light sources. The proposed dual Q-BICs scheme undoubtedly can serve as a universal recipe for other nonlinear effects, including sum-frequency generation, difference-frequency generation, and high-order harmonics.

Second‐Harmonic Generation Based on the Dual‐Band Second‐Order Topological Corner States

Coherent frequency conversions using multiband topological edge states in photonic structures made of nonlinear optical materials have been extensively investigated. In practice, however, coherent sources localized at the subwavelength scale are of great importance. Herein, efficient second‐harmonic generation (SHG) using dual‐band second‐order topological corner states is reported. By properly adjusting the structural parameters, dual‐band corner states can be obtained in the first and second bandgaps, when the eigenfrequency of the corner state in the higher bandgap is twice that of the corner one in the lower gap. In a square lattice made of tellurium as an example, high SHG efficiency in the order of 10−1% can be obtained for a peak pump intensity of around 20 GW cm−2. The results presented provide the realizability of subwavelength‐scale coherent sources, which are robust against the structural disorder or defects.

Adiabatic Frequency Conversion Using a Time-Varying Epsilon-Near-Zero Metasurface

A time-dependent change in the refractive index of a material leads to a change in the frequency of an optical beam passing through that medium. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that this effect-known as adiabatic frequency conversion (AFC)-can be significantly enhanced by a nonlinear epsilon-near-zero-based (ENZ-based) plasmonic metasurface. Specifically, by using a 63-nm-thick metasurface, we demonstrate a large, tunable, and broadband frequency shift of up to ∼11.2 THz with a pump intensity of 4 GW/cm2. Our results represent a decrease of ∼10 times in device thickness and 120 times in pump peak intensity compared with the cases of bare, thicker ENZ materials for the similar amount of frequency shift. Our findings might potentially provide insights for designing efficient time-varying metasurfaces for the manipulation of ultrafast pulses.

Efficient non-perturbative high-harmonic generation from nonlinear metasurfaces with low pump intensity

High-harmonic generation (HHG) from solids in non-perturbative regime has recently attracted great interest due to the high efficiency compared with atomic gaseous media, compact experimental configurations, and promising applications for spectroscopy and coherent extreme ultraviolet sources. However, it needs still high pump intensity in the order of several hundreds GW/cm2. In this work, we present comprehensive results of efficient HHG with low pump threshold by employing high field enhancements in dielectric metasurfaces and hybrid metasurfaces comprising plasmonic nanoantennae. The numerical results show that ZnO nanodisk arrays supported by gold substrate enable us to generate high-order harmonics with efficiency in the order of 10−5–10−6% in plateau region and cut-off order of up to 21 by pumping at 1550 nm with a peak intensity below 70 GW/cm2. When using metasurfaces of plasmonic nanoantennae containing ZnO nanoparticles in their gaps and supported by dielectric substrate, HHG can be realized by using pump with much lower peak intensity and the spatial inhomogeneity of plasmon-induced local field plays an important role, leading to the appearance of even order harmonics. For peak pump intensity of about 0.4 GW/cm2, the resultant HHG efficiency in plateau region is in the orders of 10−8% for odd order harmonics and 10−9% for even order ones. In particular, when the plasmonic metasurfaces are supported by dielectric-coated metallic substrate, the local field in the gap region is further enhanced, resulting in HHG efficiency 1–2 orders-of-magnitude higher than the case of using dielectric substrate.

Carbon functionalized bismuth vanadate thin films based photoelectrochemical logic gates

Carbon functionalized bismuth vanadate (BVO) photoanodes were synthesized using simple wet chemical process. To ascertain and determine various aspects of synthesized photoanodes, different types of characterization and measurements such as, X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), UV–Visible (UV–Vis), Raman, Photoelectrochemical (PEC), Mott-Schottky (MS), and Electron Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) have been carried out. Carbon functionalized BVO (C-BVO) photoanodes demonstrated superior photoconversion efficiency (η∼0.38%) and short circuit current (JSC∼0.50 mA/cm2 at 0.5 V vs. SCE) compared to pristine BVO. Bare BVO based PEC OR and AND logic gates have also been designed using pulsed white light beams. The PEC response reveals that for a white light beam with peak pump intensity of 100 mW/cm2, a photocurrent density of 83 μA/cm2 is generated at a bias of ∼0.5 V vs. SCE. Moreover, by tuning bias the photocurrent response can be inverted and further utilized to realize different logic operations simultaneously. The present study paves a new way for bismuth vanadate-based PEC computing devices.

Dielectric Chiral Metasurfaces for Second‐Harmonic Generation with Strong Circular Dichroism

AbstractDielectric chiral metasurfaces can generate harmonic waves with high efficiency and strong circular dichroism (CD), when they are supported by metallic substrates. Numerical results show that the second‐harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency of about 10−3% for a peak pump intensity of about 5 GW cm−2 can be achieved in the blue‐UV, and the SHG CD reaches up to about 1.8, from a metasurface of Z‐shaped lithium niobate nanoantenna array supported by gold substrate. Highly efficient and strong circular dichroic nonlinear responses are attributed to the plasmon‐assisted local field enhancement in the dielectric chiral nanoantennae adjacent to the metallic substrate.

Spin‐Controlled Nonlinear Harmonic Generations from Plasmonic Metasurfaces Coupled to Intersubband Transitions

AbstractMetasurfaces that generate nonlinear optical responses provide new degrees of freedom for applications such as nonlinear holography, wave mixing, and new frequencies generation. To extend the utility of flat nonlinear optics, metasurfaces providing both giant nonlinear response for efficient frequency mixing in subwavelength films and a single‐beam output with a local wavefront control need to be developed. Metasurfaces with giant nonlinear response have recently been realized using the concept of intersubband polaritons. Separately, nonlinear metasurfaces providing a single‐beam nonlinear output with a local wavefront control have been studied. However, a metasurface platform that possesses both of these properties has yet to be demonstrated. Herein, the first such platform is presented and its operation for three‐ and four‐wave mixing processes is demonstrated. This approach is based on using Pancharatnam–Berry phase control of local nonlinear response and on employing meta‐atoms with specific symmetries to enable generation of only a single nonlinear beam. Experimentally, 400 nm‐thick metasurfaces with a wavefront‐controlled single‐beam output are demonstrated for second‐ and third‐harmonic generation at pump wavelength of approximately 10 µm. Power conversion efficiencies of 7.6 × 10−4% and 3.6 × 10−4% are obtained for the two nonlinear processes, respectively, at peak pumping intensity of only 80 kW cm−2.

Second-Harmonic Generation in Mie-Resonant GaAs Nanowires

We investigate the enhancement of second-harmonic generation in cylindrical GaAs nanowires. Although these nanostructures confine light in two dimensions, power conversion efficiencies on the order of 10 − 5 with a pump peak intensity of ~ 1 GW / cm 2 are possible if the pump and the second-harmonic fields are coupled to the Mie-type resonances of the nanowire. We identify a large range of nanowire radii in which a double-resonance condition, i.e., both the pump and the second-harmonic fields excite normal modes of the nanowire, induces a high-quality-factor peak of conversion efficiency. We show that second-harmonic light can be scattered with large efficiency even if the second-harmonic photon energy is larger than 1.42 eV, i.e., the electronic bandgap of GaAs, above which the material is considered opaque. Finally, we evaluate the efficiency of one-photon absorption of second-harmonic light and find that resonant GaAs nanowires absorb second-harmonic light in the near-field region almost at the same rate at which they radiate second-harmonic light in the far-field region.

Efficient Nonlinear Metasurface Based on Nonplanar Plasmonic Nanocavities

Since their discovery in the 1960s, nonlinear optical effects have revolutionized optical technologies and laser industry. Development of efficient nanoscale nonlinear sources will pave the way for new applications in photonic circuitry, quantum optics and biosensing. However, nonlinear signal generation at dimensions smaller than the wavelength of light brings new challenges. The fundamental difficulty of designing an efficient nonlinear source is that some of the contributing factors involved in nonlinear wave-mixing at the nanoscale are often hard to satisfy simultaneously. Here, we overcome these limitations by developing a new type of nonplanar plasmonic metasurfaces, which can greatly enhance the second harmonic generation (SHG) at visible frequencies and achieve conversion efficiency of ∼6 × 10–5 at a peak pump intensity of ∼0.5 GW/cm2. This is 4–5 orders of magnitude larger than the efficiencies observed for nonlinear thin films and doubly resonant plasmonic antennas. The proposed metasurface cons...

Nonlinear Fano-Resonant Dielectric Metasurfaces.

Strong nonlinear light-matter interaction is highly sought-after for a variety of applications including lasing and all-optical light modulation. Recently, resonant plasmonic structures have been considered promising candidates for enhancing nonlinear optical processes due to their ability to greatly enhance the optical near-field; however, their small mode volumes prevent the inherently large nonlinear susceptibility of the metal from being efficiently exploited. Here, we present an alternative approach that utilizes a Fano-resonant silicon metasurface. The metasurface results in strong near-field enhancement within the volume of the silicon resonator while minimizing two photon absorption. We measure a third harmonic generation enhancement factor of 1.5 × 10(5) with respect to an unpatterned silicon film and an absolute conversion efficiency of 1.2 × 10(-6) with a peak pump intensity of 3.2 GW cm(-2). The enhanced nonlinearity, combined with a sharp linear transmittance spectrum, results in transmission modulation with a modulation depth of 36%. The modulation mechanism is studied by pump-probe experiments.

Performance of MgO:PPLN, KTA, and KNbO_3 for mid-wave infrared broadband parametric amplification at high average power

The performance of potassium niobate (KNbO₃), MgO-doped periodically poled lithium niobate (MgO:PPLN), and potassium titanyl arsenate (KTA) were experimentally compared for broadband mid-wave infrared parametric amplification at a high repetition rate. The seed pulses, with an energy of 6.5 μJ, were amplified using 410 μJ pump energy at 1064 nm to a maximum pulse energy of 28.9 μJ at 3 μm wavelength and at a 160 kHz repetition rate in MgO:PPLN while supporting a transform limited duration of 73 fs. The high average powers of the interacting beams used in this study revealed average power-induced processes that limit the scaling of optical parametric amplification in MgO:PPLN; the pump peak intensity was limited to 3.8 GW/cm² due to nonpermanent beam reshaping, whereas in KNbO₃ an absorption-induced temperature gradient in the crystal led to permanent internal distortions in the crystal structure when operated above a pump peak intensity of 14.4 GW/cm².

SNR improvement based on non-collinear OPCPA with angular spectral dispersion in BBO crystal

The characteristics of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement based on non-collinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) with angular spectral dispersion (ASD) was revealed and investigated. The angular dispersion formula was derived theoretically and the effects of crystal length, pump peak intensity, noise characteristics and angular dispersion on the SNR improvement and conversion efficiency were discussed. Furthermore, by optimizing the critical parameters, 35% conversion efficiency and more than 3 orders of magnitude of SNR improvement were achieved for the chirped signal pulse with a central wavelength of 800nm, pumped by 532nm in presented amplification scheme with BBO crystal.

Role of excited state photoionization in the 852.1 nm Cs laser pumped by Cs-Ar photoassociation

Photoionization of Cs (6p 2P3/2) atoms during the operation of a Cs D2 line (852.1 nm: 6p 2P3/2→6s 2S1/2) laser, pumped by free→free transitions of thermal Cs-Ar ground state pairs, has been investigated experimentally and computationally. Photoexcitation of Cs vapor/Ar mixtures through the blue satellite of the D2 transition (peaking at 836.7 nm) selectively populates the 2P3/2 upper laser level by the dissociation of the CsAr excited complex. Comparison of laser output energy data, for instantaneous pump powers up to 3 MW, with the predictions of a numerical model sets an upper bound of 8 × 10−26 cm4 W−1 on the Cs (6p 2P3/2) two photon ionization cross-section at 836.7 nm which corresponds to a single photon cross-section of 2.4 × 10−19 cm2 for a peak pump intensity of 3 MW cm−2.

Influence of three-photon absorption on Mid-infrared cross-phase modulation in silicon-on-sapphire waveguides

The influence of three-photon absorption (3PA) on cross-phase modulation (XPM) effect in the mid-infrared (IR) region is theoretically investigated in silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) waveguides. It is found that the 3PA-induced nonlinear losses in the SOS waveguide will be considerable for the pulse propagation in the wavelength region of 2300 nm-3300 nm when the pump peak intensity is high enough. For the XPM process, the 3PA and 3PA-induced free-carrier effects can affect the spectrum and temporal profiles of the pump and signal pulses for sufficiently high pump peak intensities. Moreover, the XPM-induced frequency shift of signal spectrum is also discussed with different pump peak intensities, and the XPM-induced blue and red shifts are reduced due to 3PA.

Optoelectronic Logic Gates Based on Photovoltaic Response of Bacteriorhodopsin Polymer Composite Thin Films

We present designs of optoelectronic OR, AND, NOR, and NAND logic gates with multiple pulsed pump laser beams based on the photovoltaic response of bacteriorhodopsin (BR) molecules embedded in a polyvinyl matrix coated on ITO. A detailed experimental study of the photovoltaic response reveals that continuous pulsed exposure to 532 nm and 405 nm laser light results in a large photocurrent/photovoltage, due to rapid reprotonation and chromophore reisomerization, taking BR to the ground state in hundreds of nanoseconds. It also helps in sustaining the photovoltage at higher frequencies and in maintaining the shape of the photovoltage. It is shown experimentally that for a pulsed laser beam at 532 nm with peak pump intensity of 1.19 W/cm (2), a photovoltage of 50 mV is generated. A detailed numerical simulation of the photovoltaic response of BR has been carried out taking into account all the six states (B, K, L, M, N, and O) in the BR photocycle to ascertain the effect of various parameters such as lifetime of the M-state, the pump pulse-width, pump intensity, lifetime of excited protons, and rate constant of excited protons. Experimental results are in good agreement with theoretical simulations. The present study opens up new prospects for protein-based optoelectronic computing.

Room temperature mid-infrared surface-emitting photonic crystal laser on silicon

We demonstrate a mid-infrared surface-emitting photonic crystal laser on silicon substrate operating at room temperature. The active region consisting of PbSe/PbSrSe multiple quantum wells was grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Si(111) substrate patterned with a photonic crystal (PC) array. The PC array forms a transverse magnetic polarized photonic bandgap at around 2840 cm−1. Under pulsed optical pumping, room temperature multimode lasing emissions were observed at wavelength ∼3.5 μm with estimated threshold peak pumping intensity of 24 kW/cm2. Angular-dependent measurement indicates the lasing is of a Gaussian-like profile with full width at half maximum of 4.66°.

Theory and experiment for atomic optical filter based on optical anisotropy in rubidium

An atomic optical filter based on optical anisotropy induced by another left-circularly polarized pump field is theoretically and experimentally investigated in the 5 S 1/2–5 P 3/2–5 D 3/2 ladder-type system of rubidium vapor. The filter displays a single peak transmission of 14.4% with 396 MHz bandwidth narrower than Doppler width. Furthermore, the variation of peak transmission versus pump intensity, pump detuning and cell temperature are also given. The theoretical and experimental results are in good agreement, which can enhance understanding of operation mechanism for this category of filter. The narrow-bandwidth filter is useful for free-space optical systems and laser spectroscopy.

All-optical switching in 3,3′-diethyl-2,2′-thiatricarbocyanine Iodide dye molecules

All-optical switching has been theoretically analyzed in the 3,3′-diethyl-2,2′-thiatricarbocyanine iodide (DTTCI) carbocyanine dye that exhibits large excited-state absorption to achieve high contrast and fast switching. Switching has been analyzed both ns and ps pump pulse widths. It is shown that there is an optimum value of concentration for given peak pump intensity at which maximum modulation can be achieved. We can get 93.84% modulation of transmission of a CW probe laser beam at 532 nm at peak pumping intensity of 500 kW/cm2 at 763 nm, with Δt=1 ns and concentration of 80 μM in alcohol, resulting in switch-off and on time of 2 ns and 8 ns, respectively. The results have been also used to design all-optical NOT and the universal NOR and NAND logic gates with multiple pump laser pulses.