Up/down-conversion of infrared light by few-layer graphene polytypes

Abstract

Optical nonlinearity of materials with broken inversion symmetry enables two-photon processes where an incoming pair of photons can generate an up-converted photon with the combined frequency, or a high-energy photon can be split into a correlated pair of down-converted photons. Here, we identify few-layer graphene films that offer up/down-conversion capability in the infrared spectral range. For mixed stacking tetralayers (ABCB), which are non-centrosymmetric 2D crystals, we find highly efficient nearly resonant up/down-conversion of [${\omega }_1,{\omega }_2$] photon pairs into/from a photon with $0.7$eV$<\Omega ={\omega }_1+{\omega }_2<1.1$eV. We also note that a pronounced second-order nonlinearity in the spectral range of $0.7$eV$<\Omega <0.9$eV can be promoted in rhombohedral tri- and tetralayers by asymmetrical encapsulation. Potentially, for fibers coated with few-layer graphene, this opens the door for ``in fiber" production of photon pairs with correlated polarizations.

6 pages, 3 figures