Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids: Composite Materials and Metamaterials for Nonlinear Optics

There has been great interest in the development of composite optical materials and metamaterials for applications in modern optical technology. Materials with a strongly nonlinear response are required for many applications, and especially in photonics for processes such as all-optical switching. It is of particular interest to design composite structures that enhance the value of the third-order optical susceptibility chi-3. Under ideal conditions, this composite chi-3 can exceed the chi-3 values of the constituents of the composite [1]. This enhancement of the nonlinear response can be understood as a consequence of the judicious use of local field effects [2]. Enhanced nonlinear response of composite materials and structures has been demonstrated for a variety of materials [3-7]. Recent work has shown an additional means of enhancing the nonlinear optical response by making use of a material that possesses a vanishingly small electric permittivity at the wavelength of interest. Such materials are known as epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials [8], and they have been observed to display extremely large values of the chi-3 response [9]. These materials, on their own or when incorporated into metasurfaces [10], hold great promise for high-speed, all-optical switching applications and operate with minimal power requirements.

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[4] R. L. Nelson and R. W. Boyd, Appl. Phys. Lett. 74, 2417, 1999.
[5] N. N. Lepeshkin, R. W. Boyd, et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 123902 2004.
[6] J. E.Heebner and R. W. Boyd, Opt. Lett. 24, 847, 1999.
[7] J.E. Heebner, R.W. Boyd, et al., Optics Letters 29, 769 (2004).
[8] N. Kinsey et al., Optica 2, 616 (2015).
[9] M. Z. Alam, I. D. Leon, and R. W. Boyd, Science 352, 795 (2016).
[10] M. Z. Alam, R. W. Boyd et al., Nature Photonics 12, 79–83 (2018).