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Frequency conversion of surface plasmon-polaritons at a boundary of nonlinear dielectric and metal


  Michael Volodarsky [1]  ,  Ido Dolev [1]  ,  Yonatan Sivan [2]  ,  Tal Ellenbogen [3]  ,  Ady Arie [1]  
 [1] Dept. of Physical Electronics, Fleischman Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
[2] Dept. of Physics, The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
[3] School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

Surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) is a surface electromagnetic wave that propagates at a boundary of dielectric material and metal. In this work we consider the case in which the dielectric is a quadratic nonlinear material, hence the SPP wave can generate another SPP or an electromagnetic wave at a new frequency through a nonlinear process. The tight confinement of the SPP wave is highly advantageous for nonlinear interactions. Although second harmonic generation processes have been observed in the past by either exploiting the nonlinear properties of the metal or the dielectric medium, the emphasis of our research is on engineering the nonlinear properties of the dielectric medium in order to quasi-phase match the wave-vectors of the fundamental SPP and the second harmonic wave. For ferroelectric crystals, such as LiNbO3 or KTP, this can be done by modulating the nonlinear coefficient of the dielectric crystal. We present simulation results of several such processes and preliminary experimental results.