All-optical polarization and amplitude modulation of second-harmonic generation in atomically thin semiconductors

Abstract

Second-harmonic generation is of paramount importance in several fields of science and technology, including frequency conversion, self-referencing of frequency combs, nonlinear spectroscopy and pulse characterization. Advanced functionalities are enabled by modulation of the harmonic generation efficiency, which can be achieved with electrical or all-optical triggers. Electrical control of the harmonic generation efficiency offers large modulation depth at the cost of low switching speed, by contrast to all-optical nonlinear devices, which provide high speed and low modulation depth. Here we demonstrate all-optical modulation of second-harmonic generation in MoS2 with a modulation depth of close to 100% and speed limited only by the fundamental pulse duration. This result arises from a combination of D3h crystal symmetry and the deep subwavelength thickness of the sample, it can therefore be extended to the whole family of transition metal dichalcogenides to provide great flexibility in the design of advanced nonlinear optical devices such as high-speed integrated frequency converters, broadband autocorrelators for ultrashort pulse characterization, and tunable nanoscale holograms.

References in corpus (8)

• Non-linear Optical Spectroscopy of Excited Exciton States for Efficient Valley Coherence Generation in WSe2 Monolayers
• Electrical Control of Second-Harmonic Generation in a WSe2 Monolayer Transistor
• Optical imaging of strain in two-dimensional crystals
• Metasurface-assisted phase-matching-free second harmonic generation in lithium niobate waveguides
• Hot carriers in graphene -- fundamentals and applications
• Electrically Tunable Optical Nonlinearities in Graphene-Covered SiN Waveguides Characterized by Four-Wave Mixing
• Electric-field switchable second-harmonic generation in bilayer MoS${}_2$ by inversion symmetry breaking
• Electrically Tunable Four-Wave-Mixing in Graphene Heterogeneous Fiber for Individual Gas Molecule Detection

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Fabrication methods for integrating 2D materials
• Parametric Nonlinear Optics with Layered Materials and Related Heterostructures
• Probing Electronic States in Monolayer Semiconductors through Static and Transient Third-Harmonic Spectroscopy
• Tuning exciton recombination rates in doped transition metaldichalcogenides
• Tuning nanowire lasers via hybridization with two-dimensional materials