Stimulated emission tomography of spontaneous four-wave mixing in plasmonic nanoantennas
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We used stimulated emission tomography (SET) to assess the efficiency of spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) from a plasmonic nanoantenna under pulsed excitation. We characterize the SFWM photon generation rate by measuring stimulated degenerate four-wave mixing. We produce a map of the SFWM joint spectral density that characterizes the biphoton state, which we find has a broad bandwidth due to the absence of phase matching. The joint spectral density retrieval via SET is fast and straightforward compared to traditional coincidence measurements. By calculating the number of stimulating and generated photons along with the frequency mixing efficiency, we have determined the power-independent intrinsic SFWM generation rate to be on the order of 103 photon pairs per second per mW squared per particle, while the power-independent extrinsic generation rate is approximately 1 photon pair per second per mW squared per particle. There is scope to increase the nonlinear response by scaling up to large area metasurfaces using low-loss dielectric materials that would allow the produced photon pairs to exceed background fluorescence. Such an SFWM metasurface could be a potential alternative to parametric down conversion, which requires rarer second-order nonlinear materials that are also challenging to integrate with photonic structures.
Date Issued
2025-08-20
Date Acceptance
2025-07-10
Citation
ACS Photonics, 2025, 12 (8), pp.4415-4422
ISSN
2330-4022
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Start Page
4415
End Page
4422
Journal / Book Title
ACS Photonics
Volume
12
Issue
8
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 .
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/40861259
Subjects
four-wave mixing
GENERATION
Materials Science
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology
nonlinearoptics
Optics
PHOTON PAIRS
photon-pair generation.
Physical Sciences
Physics
Physics, Applied
Physics, Condensed Matter
plasmonics
Science & Technology
Science & Technology - Other Topics
spontaneous four-wavemixing
stimulated emission tomography
Technology
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Date Publish Online
2025-07-18