Enhancing Four-Wave-Mixing Processes by Nanowire Arrays Coupled to a Gold Film

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that coupling nanowire arrays to a gold film significantly enhances four-wave mixing efficiency, offering a promising approach for compact integrated photonic devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel nanowire array and gold film configuration that greatly improves four-wave mixing efficiency through combined localized and delocalized surface plasmon effects.

Findings

Four-wave mixing efficiency increases up to 10,000 times with nanowire arrays.

Both localized and delocalized surface plasmons contribute to enhancement.

The structure is feasible for nanofabrication and integration into photonic systems.

Abstract

We consider the process of four-wave mixing in an array of gold nanowires strongly coupled to a gold film. Using full-wave simulations, we perform a quantitative comparison of the four-wave mixing efficiency associated with the thin film geometry with and without the nanowire arrays. When the nanowire array is present, both the delocalized surface plasmon of the film as well as the localized surface plasmon resonances of the nanowires contribute to the local field enhancement, yielding an overall FWM efficiency enhancement of up to four orders-of-magnitude over a wide range of excitation angles. The film-coupled nanowire array is easily amenable to nanofabrication, and could find application as an ultra-compact component for integrated photonic and quantum optic systems.