Method of enhancing second-harmonic generation of antiferromagnetic film

We present a method to increase the second-harmonic generation (SHG) by an antiferromagnetic (AF) film for a fixed input power. This film is put between two different dielectrics, and an obliquely incident electromagnetic wave is used to generate the second-harmonic (SH) waves. This method can be considered as an extension to the previous work by Lim [J. Opt. Sec. Am. B 19, 1401 (2002)] in which a single AF film and normally incident light were used. We find that the SH outputs depend sensitively on the incident angle and dielectric constants of the dielectrics. The numerical calculations based on the three examples containing an AF MnF2 film show that the SH outputs are raised to a few hundred times that of the single AF film. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America