All-optical control of nonlinear emission from resonant metasurfaces

Ziwei Yang; Lei Xu; Gabriel Sanderson; Akhshay Bhadwal; Luyao Wang; Katsuya Tanaka; Muyi Yang; Mingkai Liu; Shaun Lung; Isabelle Staude; Thomas Pertsch; Carl Brown; Mohsen Rahmani; Dragomir Neshev

arXiv · 2604.03830

All-optical control of nonlinear emission from resonant metasurfaces

Ziwei Yang·Lei Xu·Gabriel Sanderson·Akhshay Bhadwal·Luyao Wang·Katsuya Tanaka·Muyi Yang·Mingkai Liu·Shaun Lung·Isabelle Staude·Thomas Pertsch·Carl Brown·Mohsen Rahmani·Dragomir Neshev

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Abstract

Nonlinear optics underpins a broad range of photonic technologies, from classical and quantum light sources to emerging nonlinear photonic neural networks. Yet, conventional nonlinear optical devices exhibit static functionality: their transfer characteristics and emission profiles are dictated by the intrinsic nonlinear process and locked by fabrication, limiting adaptability. Here, we introduce an ultra-thin metasurface platform that enables dynamic reconfiguration of nonlinear functionality in a contact-less fashion. By leveraging all-optical control of the optical torque exerted on liquid crystal molecules infiltrating a resonant metasurface, we achieve tunable polynomial nonlinear transfer functions based on third-harmonic generation process. This mechanism further allows real-time modulation of nonlinear weighting across different diffraction orders, revealing a previously unexplored interplay between mode structure and nonlinear emission. Our approach opens up a pathway toward field-programmable nonlinear photonic systems, offering unprecedented flexibility for reconfigurable nonlinear signal processing and adaptive photonic computing.

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Ziwei Yang, Lei Xu, Gabriel Sanderson, Akhshay Bhadwal, Luyao Wang, Katsuya Tanaka, Muyi Yang, Mingkai Liu, Shaun Lung, Isabelle Staude, Thomas Pertsch, Carl Brown, Mohsen Rahmani, Dragomir Neshev. 2026-04-04. All-optical control of nonlinear emission from resonant metasurfaces. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03830

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