Enhancement of nonlinear optical properties of compounds of silica glass and metallic nanoparticle

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to introduce a method for enhancing the nonlinear optical properties in silica glass by using metallic nanoparticles. First, the T-matrix method is developed to calculate the effective dielectric constant for the compound of silica glass and metallic nanoparticles, both of which possess nonlinear dielectric constants. In the second step, the Maxwell-Garnett theory is exploited to replace the spherical nanoparticles with cylindrical and ellipsoidal ones, facilitating the calculation of the third-order nonlinear effective susceptibility for a degenerate four-wave mixing case. The results are followed by numerical computations for silver, copper and gold nanoparticles. It is shown, graphically, that the maximum and minimum of the real part of the reflection coefficient for nanoparticles of silver occurs in smaller wavelengths compared to that of copper and gold. Further, it is found that spherical nanoparticles exhibit greater figure-of-merit compared to those with cylindrical or ellipsoidal geometries.