Nonlinear Mixing of Two Laser Beams and THz Plasmons Generation in Graphene Coated Optical Fibre

Graphene is a most suitable material for Terahertz (THz) radiation generation. An efficient mechanism of THz surface plasmons (THz SPs) generation in graphene coated optical fibre by nonlinear mixing of two laser beams is proposed. The graphene coated fiber supports THz SPs with plasmon resonance in the THz regime and controllable by thickness of graphene and radius of optical fibre. The laser beams exert a difference frequency ponderomotive force on the electrons of the graphene. This ponderomotive force induces a nonlinear current in graphene which driving the difference frequency THz SPs. The normalized amplitude of THz SPs decreases with frequency as the nonlinear coupling gets weaker. The efficiency of the device is around 0.01% at a laser intensity of 3x1014 W/cm2. This scheme will be useful making the compact THz radiation source and THz plasmon sensor.

Mid-Infrared Frequency Generation via Intermodal Difference Frequency Generation in AlGaAs-On-Insulator Waveguides

We investigate theoretically mid-infrared (MIR) generation via difference frequency generation in multimode AlGaAs-on insulator (AlGaAs-OI) waveguides. The large refractive index difference between the AlGaAs core and the silica cladding shrinks the modes size down to the sub-μm2 scale, and, together with AlGaAs strong second-order nonlinear polarization, empowers strong nonlinear effects. As a result, efficient MIR generation is obtained in few-cm long waveguides with sub-μm2 transverse section, where higher order modes are exploited to achieve the phase-matching condition. These observations suggest that multimode AlGaAs-OI waveguides could represent a novel promising platform for on-chip, compact MIR sources.

THz-Photonics Transceivers By All-Dielectric Phonon-Polariton Nonlinear Nanoantennas

The THz spectrum (spanning from 0.3 THz to 30 THz) offers the potential of a plethora of applications, ranging from the imaging through non transparent media to wireless-over-fiber communications and THz-photonics. The latter framework would greatly benefit from the development of optical-to-THz wavelength converters. Exploiting Difference Frequency Generation in a nonlinear all dielectric nanoantenna, we propose a compact solution to this problem. By means of a near-Infrared pump beam (at ω1), the information signal in the optical domain (at ω2) is converted to the THz band (at ω3 = ω2 − ω1). The approach is completely transparent with respect to the modulation format, and can be easily integrated in a metasurface platform for simultaneous frequency and spatial moulding of THz beams.

Polarization Imaging of Liquid Crystal Polymer Using Terahertz Difference-Frequency Generation Source

We performed the polarization imaging of a liquid crystal polymer with a terahertz difference-frequency generation (THz DFG) source. The DFG source is an easy-to-operate and practical THz source. Liquid crystal polymers (LCPs) are suitable for applications such as fuel cell components, aircraft parts, and next-generation wireless communication materials. Accordingly, the demand for evaluating the orientation of liquid crystals, which affects the properties of the polymers, is set to increase. Since LCPs exhibit birefringence in the THz range due to the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules, we can determine the alignment of the molecules from the direction of the optical axis.

An accurate and efficient multiscale finite-difference frequency-domain method for the scalar Helmholtz equation

Frequency-domain numerical modeling of the seismic wave equation can readily describe frequency-dependent seismic wave behaviors, yet is computationally challenging to perform in finely discretized or large-scale geological models. Conventional finite-difference frequency-domain (FDFD) methods for solving the Helmholtz equation usually lead to large linear systems that are difficult to solve with a direct or iterative solver. Parallel strategies and hybrid solvers can partially alleviate the computational burden by improving the performance of the linear system solver. We develop a novel multiscale FDFD method to eventually construct a dimension-reduced linear system from the scalar Helmholtz equation based on the general framework of heterogeneous multiscale method (HMM). The methodology associated with multiscale basis functions in the multiscale finite-element method (MsFEM) is applied to the local microscale problems of this multiscale FDFD method. Solved from frequency- and medium-dependent local Helmholtz problems, these multiscale basis functions capture fine-scale medium heterogeneities and are finally incorporated into the dimension-reduced linear system by a coupling of scalar Helmholtz problem solutions at two scales. We use several highly heterogeneous models to verify the performance in terms of the accuracy, efficiency, and memory cost of our multiscale method. The results show that our new method can solve the scalar Helmholtz equation in complicated models with high accuracy and quite low time and memory costs compared with the conventional FDFD methods.