Abstract

The nonlinear optical properties of sub wavelength patterned metallic structures have been recently re-analyzed thanks to the increasing interest of the community for metamaterials. Several theoretical and experimental works from the late sixties to the eighties report on the possibility to generate a second harmonic signal impinging on a metallic screen. Recently, structures made of metal sub-wavelength objects like nanorods, or nano horseshoe shaped resonators and nanowires periodically arranged in dielectric matrices have been realized and linearly characterized. Regarding second harmonic generation, several models have been proposed in the regime of quasi static approximation or by taking advantage of effective medium approximation. Nevertheless, the study and the understanding of non linear response of the single elements is still at a seminal stage concerning theoretical models and numerical tools.

© 2009 IEEE