In 1950, a quarter of a century after his first-ever nonlinear optical experiment when intensitydependent absorption was observed in uranium-doped glass, sergey Vavilov predicted thatbirefringence, dichroism and polarization rotatory power should be dependent on light intensity.It required the invention of the laser to observe the barely detectable effect of light intensity onthe polarization rotatory power of the optically active lithium iodate crystal, the phenomenonnow known as the nonlinear optical activity, a high-intensity counterpart of the fundamentaloptical effect of polarization rotation in chiral media. Here we report that a plasmonicmetamaterial exhibits nonlinear optical activity 30 million times stronger than lithium iodatecrystals, thus transforming this fundamental phenomenon of polarization nonlinear optics froman esoteric phenomenon into a major effect of nonlinear plasmonics with potential for practicalapplications.
展开▼
