Unlocking the full potential of wave-matter nonlinear coupling in the epsilon-near-zero regime

Abstract

In recent years, unconventional metamaterial properties have triggered a revolution of electromagnetic research which has unveiled novel scenarios of wave-matter interaction. A very small dielectric permittivity is a leading example of such unusual features, since it produces an exotic static-like regime where the electromagnetic field is spatially slowly-varying over a physically large region. The so-called epsilon-near-zero metamaterials thus offer an ideal platform where to manipulate the inner details of the "stretched" field. Here we theoretically prove that a standard nonlinearity is able to operate such a manipulation to the point that even a thin slab produces a dramatic nonlinear pulse transformation, if the dielectric permittivity is very small within the field bandwidth. The predicted non-resonant releasing of full nonlinear coupling produced by the epsilon-near-zero condition does not resort to any field enhancement mechanisms and opens novel routes to exploiting matter nonlinearity for steering the radiation by means of ultra-compact structures.

8 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Epsilon-Near-Zero (ENZ) Metamaterials and Electromagnetic Sources: Tailoring the Radiation Phase Pattern
• Theory of Supercoupling, Squeezing Wave Energy, and Field Confinement in Narrow Channels and Tight Bends Using Epsilon-Near-Zero Metamaterials
• Enhanced third harmonic generation from the epsilon-near-zero modes of ultrathin films
• Ultrafast plasmonics using transparent conductive oxide hybrids in the epsilon near-zero regime