Scattering matrix for chiral harmonic generation and frequency mixing in nonlinear metasurfaces

Abstract We generalize the concept of optical scattering matrix ( S -matrix) to characterize harmonic generation and frequency mixing in planar metasurfaces in the limit of undepleted pump approximation. We show that the symmetry properties of such nonlinear S -matrix are determined by the metasurface symmetries at the macroscopic and microscopic scale. We demonstrate that for description of degenerate frequency mixing processes such as optical harmonic generation, the multidimensional S -matrix can be replaced with a reduced two-dimensional S -matrix. We show that for metasurfaces possessing specific point group symmetries, the selection rules determining the transformation of the reduced nonlinear S -matrix are simplified substantially and can be expressed in a compact form. We apply the developed approach to analyze chiral harmonic generation in nonlinear metasurfaces with various symmetries including rotational, inversion, in-plane mirror, and out-of-plane mirror symmetries. For each of those symmetries, we confirm the results of the developed analysis by full-wave numerical calculations. We believe our results provide a new paradigm for engineering nonlinear optical properties of metasurfaces which may find applications in active and nonlinear optics, biosensing, and quantum information processing.