Investigating the origin of third harmonic generation from diabolo optical antennas

We propose to use diabolo nanoantennas for experimentally investigating the origin of the enhanced third harmonic generation by localized surface plasmon polaritons. In such a geometry, the opposing apexes of bowties are electrically connected by a thin gold nanorod, which has two important functions in discriminating the point of harmonic generation. First, the inserted gold nanorod shifts the field enhancement area to be far away from the dielectric substrate material. Next, the accumulation of free charges at the adjacent bowtie tips produces a strong electric field inside the gold nanorod. The diabolo nanoantennas allow us to examine the contribution of the bare gold susceptibility to the third harmonic conversion. Our results reveal that the bare gold does not significantly enhance the harmonic generation at high pump intensity. From this, we deduce that in regular bowtie antennas, the enhanced harmonic photons mainly arise from the substrate sapphire that is located in the feedgap of the bowtie, where the electric near-field is significantly enhanced by the localized surface plasmons. © 2017 Author(s)