Sergiy Yulin | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Systematic Study of Amorphous ABC Heterostructures at the Atomic Scale as a Second-Order Nonlinear Optical Metamaterial

Systematic exploration of amorphous ABC heterostructures revealed that nanoscale morphological modifications markedly improved their artificial bulk second-order susceptibility. These amorphous birefringent heterostructures were fabricated through plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition of three oxides, effectively breaking the centrosymmetry on the nanoscale. We observe a dependence of the optical nonlinearity on the thickness variation of three constituent materials, SiO$_2$, TiO$_2$, and Al$_2$O$_3$, ranging from tens of nanometers to the atomic scale, and these thin films exhibit second-order susceptibility at their interfaces. Our findings reveal that the enhancement of nonlinear optical properties is strongly correlated with a high density of layers and superior interface quality, where the interface second-order nonlinearity transitions to bulk-like second-harmonic generation. An effective bulk second-order susceptibility of $χ_{zzz} = 2.0 \pm 0.2$~pm/V at the wavelength of 1032~nm is achieved, comparable to typical values for conventional monocrystalline nonlinear materials.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2020

Broadband holography-assisted coherent imaging -- towards attosecond imaging at the nanoscale

In recent years nanoscale coherent imaging has emerged as an indispensable imaging modality allowing to surpass the resolution limit given by classical imaging optics. At the same time, attosecond science has experienced enormous progress and has revealed the ultrafast dynamics in atoms, molecules, and complex materials. Combining attosecond temporal resolution of pump-probe experiments with nanometer spatial resolution would allow studying ultrafast dynamics on the smallest spatio-temporal scales but has not been demonstrated yet. Unfortunately, the large bandwidth of attosecond pulses usually hinders high-resolution coherent imaging. Here we present a robust holography-enhanced coherent imaging method, which allows combining high quality and high spatial resolution coherent imaging with a large spectral bandwidth. By implementing our method at a high harmonic source we demonstrate, for the first time, a spatial resolution of 34 nm (2.5 λ) in combination with a spectral bandwidth supporting a Fourier limited pulse duration of only 380 as. The method is single-shot capable, additionally retrieves the spectrum from the measured diffraction pattern, and is thus immune against shot-to-shot fluctuations. This paves the way for an ultrafast view on nanoscale dynamics e.g. ultrafast charge transfer or ultrafast spin currents being relevant for Petahertz electronics and future data storage.

physics.optics↗