Quasibirefringent phase-matching technique for third-harmonic pulse generation from multilayered metamaterials

Abstract

A phase-matched third-harmonic (TH) generation from multilayered metamaterials (MMs) with a third-order nonlinearity is numerically investigated in the ultrashort pulse regime. To overcome the phase-mismatch problem due to natural material dispersion, we propose a solution based on engineered dispersion provided by MMs with hyperbolic dispersion, i.e., with anisotropic materials possessing a positive and negative dielectric permittivity. We analyzed selected material choices and demonstrated quasibirefringent phase-matched conditions for TH conversion, which could be achieved by optimizing the fill-factor of metamaterials. We study the conversion efficiencies of transmitted and reflected TH pulses as a function of incident angles and input fundamental-frequency intensity; the maximum efficiencies are obtained for optimal incident angles.