An optical metamixer

Abstract

A frequency mixer is a nonlinear device that combines electromagnetic waves to create waves at new frequencies. Mixers are ubiquitous components in modern radio-frequency technology and are widely used in microwave signal processing. The development of versatile frequency mixers for optical frequencies remains challenging: such devices generally rely on weak nonlinear optical processes and, thus, must satisfy phase matching conditions. In this work, we utilize a GaAs-based dielectric metasurface to demonstrate an optical frequency mixer that concurrently generates eleven new frequencies spanning the ultraviolet to near-infrared (NIR) spectral range. Our approach combines strong intrinsic material nonlinearities, enhanced electromagnetic fields, and relaxed phase-matching requirements, to allow seven different nonlinear optical processes to occur simultaneously. Specifically, when pumped by two femtosecond NIR pulses, we observe second-, third- and fourth-harmonic generation, sum-frequency generation, two-photon absorption induced photoluminescence, four-wave mixing, and six-wave mixing. Such ultracompact optical mixers may enable a plethora of applications in biology, chemistry, sensing, communications and quantum optics.

total 9 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Magnetic light
• Mode-matching in multiresonant plasmonic nanoantennas for enhanced second harmonic generation
• Resonantly enhanced second-harmonic generation using III-V semiconductor all-dielectric metasurfaces
• Electromagnetic multipole theory for optical nanomaterials
• Monolithic AlGaAs second-harmonic nanoantennas
• III-V semiconductor nano-resonators-a new strategy for passive, active, and nonlinear all-dielectric metamaterials

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