Anisotropic Second- and Third-Order Nonlinear Optical Response from Anisotropy-Controlled Metallic Nanocomposites

Plasmonics has become a route to develop ultracompact optical devices on a chip by using extreme light concentration. It also gives the ability to perform simultaneous electrical and optical functions, and facilitates dramatic enhancement of localized field intensities via metallic nanostructures. On the other hand, nonlinear optical interactions scale with the local intensity of the optical field, i.e., the dielectric polarization of a given material responds to the local electric field in a high-order way. For a metal-dielectric nanostructure, the combination of plasmonics with its nonlinear optical response offers the opportunity to manipulate nonlinear optical responses in sub-diffraction-limited volumes.