Efficient Second-Harmonic Generation from Dielectric Inter-subband Polaritonic Metasurfaces Coupled to Lattice Resonance

Nano Lett. 2023 Oct 11;23(19):9003-9010. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02626. Epub 2023 Sep 27.

Abstract

Nonlinear optical metasurfaces offer a possibility to perform frequency mixing without the phase-matching constraints of bulk nonlinear crystals and with control of the local nonlinear response at a sub-wavelength scale. Nonlinear inter-subband polaritonic metasurfaces created by combining the semiconductor heterostructures with quantum-engineered inter-subband nonlinear response and electromagnetically engineered metal-clad nanoresonators offer by far the largest second-order nonlinear response of all condensed matter systems reported to date. However, the nonlinear optical response of these metasurfaces is limited by optical intensity saturation in the nanoresonator hot spots that prevented the achievement of power conversion efficiencies over 0.2% in three-wave mixing experiments. In this study, we propose and experimentally demonstrate dielectric inter-subband polaritonic metasurfaces for second-harmonic generation that achieve 0.37% power conversion efficiency. Our structure is created by a new design approach that combines dielectric resonators inducing Mie resonant modes with a lattice resonance to achieve a uniform and high field enhancement throughout the meta-atom volume.

Keywords: Lattice resonance; Mie resonance; harmonic generations; inter-subband transitions; multiple quantum well; nonlinear metasurface.