Nonlinear metamaterial

An engineered material whose designed structure produces a response that changes nonlinearly with an applied electromagnetic, acoustic, or mechanical field. Its effective behavior can be tuned through both constituent materials and structural geometry.

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Nonlinear optics: The study of optical phenomena in which a material response depends nonlinearly on the applied light field. Many nonlinear metamaterials use field-dependent polarization to reshape, amplify, or frequency-convert light.
Metamaterial: An engineered material whose subwavelength structure produces properties not readily found in its constituent materials. Nonlinear metamaterials extend this structural design principle to field-dependent responses.
All-optical switching: The control of an optical signal by another optical signal without converting it to an electronic signal. Intensity-dependent metamaterial transmission can provide compact, fast optical switching.
Linear metamaterial: An engineered material whose effective response remains proportional to the applied field over its operating range. It lacks the field-dependent response that defines a nonlinear metamaterial.
Second-harmonic generation: A nonlinear optical process that converts two photons at one frequency into a photon at twice that frequency. Metamaterial geometry can enhance or control this frequency-doubling process.
Metasurface: A thin, patterned layer that controls waves through subwavelength elements arranged across a surface. Nonlinear metasurfaces realize many nonlinear metamaterial effects in a compact two-dimensional form.
Optical limiting: A nonlinear optical response that restricts transmitted intensity as incident light becomes stronger. Designed nonlinear absorption or scattering can protect sensors from intense illumination.
Nonlinear photonic crystal: A periodic optical structure that uses nonlinear material response to alter light propagation or generate new frequencies. Its periodicity is typically comparable to optical wavelengths, unlike the subwavelength structuring associated with metamaterials.
Kerr effect: A change in a material’s refractive index proportional to the intensity of an applied electric field. It supplies an intensity-dependent optical response that a metamaterial can magnify or spatially tailor.
Effective medium theory: Methods for describing a composite material by averaged properties when its structure is small compared with the relevant wavelength. It explains when patterned nonlinear structures can be treated as materials rather than collections of separate elements.