Resonantly enhanced second-and third-harmonic generation in dielectric nonlinear metasurfaces

Nonlinear dielectric metasurfaces provide a promising approach to control and manipulate frequency conversion optical processes at the nanoscale,thus facilitating both advances in fundamental research and the development of new practical applications in photonics,lasing,and sensing.Here,we employ symmetry-broken metasurfaces made of centrosymmetric amorphous silicon for resonantly enhanced second-and third-order nonlinear optical response.Exploiting the rich physics of optical quasi-bound states in the continuum and guided mode resonances,we comprehensively study through rigorous numerical calculations the relative contribution of surface and bulk effects to second-harmonic generation(SHG)and the bulk contribution to third-harmonic generation(THG) from the meta-atoms.Next,we experimentally achieve optical resonances with high quality factors,which greatly boosts light-matter interaction,resulting in about 550 times SHG enhancement and nearly 5000-fold increase of THG.A good agreement between theoretical predictions and experimental measurements is observed.To gain deeper insights into the physics of the investigated nonlinear optical processes,we further numerically study the relation between nonlinear emission and the structural asymmetry of the metasurface and reveal that the generated harmonic signals arising from linear sharp resonances are highly dependent on the asymmetry of the meta-atoms.Our work suggests a fruitful strategy to enhance the harmonic generation and effectively control different orders of harmonics in all-dielectric metasurfaces,enabling the development of efficient active photonic nanodevices.

Meta-optics and bound states in the continuum

We discuss the recent advances in meta-optics and nanophotonics associated with the physics of bound states in the continuum(BICs). Such resonant states appear due to a strong coupling between leaky modes in optical guiding structures being supported by subwavelength high-index dielectric Mieresonant nanoantennas or all-dielectric metasurfaces. First, we review briefly very recent developments in the BIC physics in application to isolated subwavelength particles. We pay a special attention to novel opportunities for nonlinear nanophotonics due to the large field enhancement inside the particle volume creating the resonant states with high-quality(high-Q) factors, the so-called quasi-BIC, that can be supported by the subwavelength particles. Second, we discuss novel applications of the BIC physics to alldielectric optical metasurfaces with broken-symmetry meta-atoms when tuning to the BIC conditions allows to enhance substantially the Q factor of the flat-optics dielectric structures. We also present the original results on nonlinear high-Q metasurfaces and predict that the frequency conversion efficiency can be boosted dramatically by smart engineering of the asymmetry parameter of dielectric metasurfaces in the vicinity of the quasi-BIC regime.

Nonlinear chiral metaphotonics:a perspective

We review the physics and some applications of photonic structures designed for the realization of strong nonlinear chiroptical response.We pay much attention to the recent strategy of utilizing different types of optical resonances in metallic and dielectric subwavelength structures and metasurfaces,including surface plasmon resonances,Mie resonances,lattice-guided modes,and bound states in the continuum.We summarize earlier results and discuss more recent developments for achieving large circular dichroism combined with the high efficiency of nonlinear harmonic generation.