Plasmon-induced enhancement of nonlinear optical processes in a double-resonant metallic nanostructure grating

Nanostructured gratings in a metal surface can highly enhance nonlinear optical processes. The geometrical parameters that characterize a grating can be optimized to achieve intense near-fields, which in turn enhance the nonlinear optical signals. For a nonlinear process that involves multiple frequencies, like four-wave mixing (FWM), the optimization of grating parameters necessary to enhance the radiation in-coupling for both frequencies is not trivial. Here, we propose, compute, and experimentally demonstrate a grating design that is resonant to two excitation frequencies and thus enhances the frequency mixing processes more efficiently. Second- and third-order nonlinear mechanisms are studied using two spatially and temporally overlapped laser pulses with different frequencies. Using our grating design, we achieve an unprecedented nonlinear FWM enhancement factor of 7×103.