Surface Plasmon Polaritons Based Non-All-Optical Four-Wave Mixing

Audio, Transactions of the IRE Professional Group on (2010)

A novel concept of non-all-optical four-wave mixing (NAO-4WM) is put forward, in which a laser-launched evanescent field of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) is utilized as a coherent non-optical pumping source to involve directly in a nonlinear 4WM process at the dielectric/metal interface. Conversion efficiency of the resultant 4WM radiation is expected to be dramatically increased due to the local-field enhancement effect induced by SPPs. Feasibility of implementing this concept at the air/gold and graphene/gold interfaces is further examined by numerical simulations. The concept developed here together with its effective integration with graphene shows intriguing promise for newly emerging applications in nano-photonics, optoelectronics, and active plasmonics.