Giant nonlinear optical activity in a plasmonic metamaterial

In 1950, a quarter of a century after his first-ever nonlinear optical experiment when intensity-dependent absorption was observed in uranium-doped glass, Sergey Vavilov predicted that birefringence, dichroism and polarization rotatory power should be dependent on light intensity. It required the invention of the laser to observe the barely detectable effect of light intensity on the polarization rotatory power of the optically active lithium iodate crystal, the phenomenon now known as the nonlinear optical activity, a high-intensity counterpart of the fundamental optical effect of polarization rotation in chiral media. Here we report that a plasmonic metamaterial exhibits nonlinear optical activity 30 million times stronger than lithium iodate crystals, thus transforming this fundamental phenomenon of polarization nonlinear optics from an esoteric phenomenon into a major effect of nonlinear plasmonics with potential for practical applications.