Third-order Optical Nonlinearity in Two-dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the third-order optical nonlinearity in monolayer TMDCs, confirming their strong nonlinear response and exploring potential applications in quantum optics and photonic circuits.

Contribution

It introduces a parameter-free computational method for calculating nonlinear optical responses in TMDCs, validated against recent experiments and applicable to various nonlinear phenomena.

Findings

TMDCs exhibit extraordinarily strong third-order optical nonlinearity.

Theoretical results align with recent experimental observations.

Potential for generating squeezed states in integrated photonic devices.

Abstract

We present a detailed calculation of the linear and nonlinear optical response of four types of monolayer Two-Dimensional (2D) Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDCs), having the formula $\textrm{MX}_2$ with M=Mo,W and X=S,Se. The calculations are based on 6-band tight-binding model of TMDCs, and then performing a semiclassical perturbation analysis of response functions. We numerically calculate the linear $\chi_{\mu\nu}^{(1)}(-\omega;\omega)$ and nonlinear surface susceptibility tensors $\chi_{\mu\nu\zeta\eta}^{(3)} (-\omega_\Sigma;\omega_r,\omega_s,\omega_t)$ with $\omega_\Sigma=\omega_r+\omega_s+\omega_t$. Both non-degenerate and degenerate cases are studied for third-harmonic generation and nonlinear refractive index, respectively. Computational results obtained \textit{with no external fitting parameters} are discussed regarding two recent reported experiments on ${\rm MoS}_2$, and thus we can confirm the extraordinarily strong optical nonlinearity of TMDCs. As a possible application, we demonstrate generation of a $\frac{\pi}{4}-$rotated squeezed state by means of nonlinear response of TMDCs, in a silica micro-disk resonator covered with the 2D material. Our proposed method will enable accurate calculations of nonlinear optical response, such as four-wave mixing and high-harmonic generation in 2D materials and their heterostructures, thus enabling study of novel functionalities of 2D photonic integrated circuits.