Femtosecond all-optical polarization manipulation of harmonic generation in an anisotropic strongly coupled plasmon-epsilon-near-zero metasurface
Abstract
Ultrafast manipulation of light polarization plays a key role in modern high-speed photonics and optoelectronic operations. However, most current polarization-active modulation schemes are restricted by a limited operating wavelength range (visible to infrared), narrow-band resonant fundamental wavelength working condition, and relatively long modulation time (> 1 picosecond). Here, by taking advantage of the transient anisotropic nonlinearity of optical strong coupling between the epsilon-near-zero mode of indium tin oxide (ITO) film and polarization-selective plasmonic resonance, we achieve femtosecond polarization manipulation of broadband light that spans ultraviolet (UV) to visible region by controlling harmonic generation of the signal light under resonant pumping. We demonstrate polarization elliptic rotation of 23.3° at 407 nm for third-harmonic generation (THG) and 55.0° at 610 nm for second-harmonic generation (SHG) simultaneously within ~600 fs. In addition, the strongly coupled system can also serve as a universal femtosecond polarization modulation source, imprinting a 32.9° polarization rotation in the UV region by converting the modulation information of the fundamental signal light to that of THG light via a uniform ITO film in a cascaded configuration. Our study establishes a new paradigm for UV-based, ultrahigh-speed broadband polarization photonics with direct implications for high-speed optical information processing and programmable nonlinear photonic devices.
Related
- Polarization-Multiplexed Spatial Filtering in a Symmetric \ce{TiO2} Metasurface with an Anisotropic van der Waals Gap Fill
- Tensor-Engineered Van der Waals NbOCl2 Resonant Metasurface for Polarization-entangled Bell State Generation
- Metasurface quantum graphs for polarization-independent certified randomness
- Metasurface-integrated VCSEL designed for polarization control in optical Ising machines
- Generation and manipulation of frequency-converted Airy vortex beam via atomic four-wave mixing
BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026femtosecond,
title = {{Femtosecond all-optical polarization manipulation of harmonic generation in an anisotropic strongly coupled plasmon-epsilon-near-zero metasurface}},
author = {Yingying Zhang and Jinhai Si and Xun Hou and Kuidong Wang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.19511},
eprint = {2610.19511},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19511},
note = {CC BY-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Femtosecond all-optical polarization manipulation of harmonic generation in an anisotropic strongly coupled plasmon-epsilon-near-zero metasurface
AU - Yingying Zhang
AU - Jinhai Si
AU - Xun Hou
AU - Kuidong Wang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.19511
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19511
AB - Ultrafast manipulation of light polarization plays a key role in modern high-speed photonics and optoelectronic operations. However, most current polarization-active modulation schemes are restricted by a limited operating wavelength range (visible to infrared), narrow-band resonant fundamental wavelength working condition, and relatively long modulation time (> 1 picosecond). Here, by taking advantage of the transient anisotropic nonlinearity of optical strong coupling between the epsilon-near-zero mode of indium tin oxide (ITO) film and polarization-selective plasmonic resonance, we achieve femtosecond polarization manipulation of broadband light that spans ultraviolet (UV) to visible region by controlling harmonic generation of the signal light under resonant pumping. We demonstrate polarization elliptic rotation of 23.3° at 407 nm for third-harmonic generation (THG) and 55.0° at 610 nm for second-harmonic generation (SHG) simultaneously within ~600 fs. In addition, the strongly coupled system can also serve as a universal femtosecond polarization modulation source, imprinting a 32.9° polarization rotation in the UV region by converting the modulation information of the fundamental signal light to that of THG light via a uniform ITO film in a cascaded configuration. Our study establishes a new paradigm for UV-based, ultrahigh-speed broadband polarization photonics with direct implications for high-speed optical information processing and programmable nonlinear photonic devices.
ER -