Bridging the gap between dielectric nanophotonics and the visible regime with effectively lossless gallium phosphide antennas

Abstract

We present all-dielectric gallium phosphide (GaP) nanoantennas as an efficient nanophotonic platform for surface-enhanced second harmonic generation (SHG) and fluorescence (SEF), showing negligible losses in the visible range. Employing single GaP nanodisks, we observe an increase of more than 3 orders of magnitude in the SHG conversion signal in comparison with the bulk. This constitutes an SHG efficiency as large as 0.0002%, which is to the best of our knowledge the highest yet achieved value for a single nano-object in the optical region. Furthermore, we show that GaP dimers with 35 nm gap can enhance up to 3600 times the fluorescence emission of dyes located in the gap of the nanoantenna. This is accomplished by a fluorescence lifetime reduction of at least 22 times, accompanied by a high-intensity field confinement in the gap region. These results open new avenues for low-loss nanophotonics in the optical regime.