Engineering Local Fields in Nonlinear Plasmonic Metasurfaces -INVITED

Abstract

Nonlinear optical phenomena are paramount in many photonic applications ranging from frequency broadening and generation of ultrashort pulses to frequency comb-based metrology. A recent trend has been to miniaturize photonic components, resulting also in a demand for small scale nonlinear components. This demand is difficult to address by using conventional materials motivating the search for alternative approaches. Nonlinear plasmonic metasurface cavities have recently emerged as a promising platform to enable nanoscale nonlinear optics. Despite steady progress, the so far achieved conversion efficiencies have not yet rivalled conventional materials. Here, we discuss our recent work to develop more efficient nonlinear metamaterials, focusing on plasmonic metasurfaces supporting collective responses known as surface lattice resonances. These resonances can exhibit very narrow spectral features, showing potential to considerably enhance nonlinear processes via resonant interactions. We demonstrate a plasmonic metasurface operating at the telecommunications C band that exhibits a record-high quality factor close to 2400, demonstrating an order-of-magnitude improvement compared to existing metasurface cavities. Motivated by this experimental demonstration, we also present numerical predictions suggesting that such metasurfaces could soon answer the existing demand for miniaturized and/or flat nonlinear components.