Enhancing optical nonlinearity

Optics Intense pulses of light interacting with a dielectric material can induce optical nonlinear behavior, whereby the frequency of the output light can be doubled or tripled or excited to even higher harmonics of the input light. Usually this interaction is weak and occurs over many thousands of wavelengths, typically requiring the combination of bulk volumes of material with a confining cavity. Using a mechanism of light confinement called bound states in the continuum, Koshelev et al. show that enhanced second-harmonic generation can be obtained in nanoscale subwavelength cylinders of a dielectric material. The results on these optical nanoantennas offer a platform for developing integrated nonlinear nanophotonic devices. Science , this issue p. [288][1] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaz3985