Boosting optical nonlinearities in e-near-zero plasmonic channels

Authors

Christos Argyropoulos, University of Texas at AustinFollow
Pai-Yen Chen, University of Texas at Austin
Giuseppe D'Aguanno, AEgis Technologies Group
Nadar Engheta, University of Pennsylvania
Andrea Alu, University of Texas at AustinFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2012

Citation

PHYSICAL REVIEW B 85, 045129 (2012)

Comments

©2012 American Physical Society

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.85.045129

Abstract

The anomalous transmission properties of zero-permittivity ultranarrow channels are used to boost Kerr nonlinearities and achieve switching and bistable response for moderate optical intensities. Strong field enhancement, uniform all along the channel, is a typical feature of ε-near-zero supercoupling and is shown to be particularly suited to enhance nonlinear effects. This is obtained by designing narrow apertures at cutoff in a plasmonic screen. We show that this nonlinear mechanism can significantly outperform nonlinearities in traditional Fabry-P´erot resonant gratings.