Electrifying photonic metamaterials for tunable nonlinear optics and unconventional phase matching schemes

Abstract

Metamaterials have offered not only the unprecedented opportunity to generate unconventional electromagnetic properties that are not found in nature, but also the exciting potential to create customized nonlinear media with high-order properties correlated to linear behavior. Two particularly compelling directions of current interests are active metamaterials, where the optical properties can be purposely tailored by external stimuli in a reversible manner, and nonlinear metamaterials, which enable intensity-dependent frequency conversion of light waves. By exploring the interaction of these two directions, in this work we leverage the electrical and optical functions simultaneously supported in nanostructured metals and demonstrate electrically-controlled nonlinear optical processes from photonic metamaterials.