Silicon metasurfaces with tunable electromagnetic resonances for nonlinear optical conversion

Abstract

Dielectric metasurfaces sustain electromagnetic modes which can be exploited to enhance nonlinear frequency-conversion processes such as third-harmonic generation. In this work we employ electron-beam lithography to fabricate silicon metasurfaces supporting electromagnetic resonances with different quality factors (Q), ruled by the geometry. This allows to investigate the trade-off between resonant enhancement and matching the spectral bandwidth of the ultrafast excitation source. Both experiments and simulations indicate that higher values of Q do not a priori bring about a stronger third-harmonic generation, which correlates to the spectral overlap between the metasurface resonance and the pump bandwidth.