Enhanced second-harmonic generation from nonlinear optical metamagnetics

We present a numerical simulation of second-harmonic generation (SHG) from a nonlinear magnetic metamaterial. By inserting a second-order nonlinear material in the high local field area of magnetic metamaterial, which consists of periodic arrays of paired thin silver strips, the convertion efficiency of SHG has been significantly enhanced by almost four orders of magnitude. The corresponding field patterns and further studies on dependance between SHG and symmetry of nonlinear crystal show that the increase of the conversion efficiency is attributed to the local field enhancement caused by the magnetic resonnance of the structure. Our researches provide an additional way to further improve the optical nonlinearity in nanostructures.