Cascaded four-wave mixing in tapered plasmonic nanoantenna

TL;DR

This paper theoretically demonstrates that tapered plasmonic nanoantennas can significantly enhance nonlinear frequency conversion through cascaded four-wave mixing, with potential applications in spectroscopy, sensing, and photonics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to boost FWM efficiency in nanoantennas by resonance tuning, achieving a 300-fold increase in nonlinear conversion.

Findings

300-fold increase in nonlinear frequency conversion

Resonance tuning enhances FWM in nanoantennas

Potential applications in ultrafast nonlinear optics

Abstract

We study theoretically the cascaded four-wave mixing (FWM) in broadband tapered plasmonic nanoantennas and demonstrate a 300-fold increase in nonlinear frequency conversion detected in the main lobe of the nanoantenna far-field pattern. This is achieved by tuning the elements of the nanoantenna to resonate frequencies involved into the FWM interaction. Our findings have a potentially broad application in ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy, sensing, on-chip optical frequency conversion, nonlinear optical metamaterials and photon sources.