Near-unity third-harmonic circular dichroism driven by a quasibound state in the continuum in asymmetric silicon metasurfaces

Abstract

We use numerical simulations to demonstrate third-harmonic generation with near-unity nonlinear circular dichroism (CD) and high conversion efficiency (10-2W-2) in asymmetric Si-on-SiO2 metasurfaces. The working principle relies on the spin-selective excitation of a quasibound state in the continuum, characterized by a very high (>105) quality factor. By tuning multimode interference with the variation of the metasurface geometrical parameters, we show the possibility to control both linear CD and nonlinear CD. Our results pave the way for the development of all-dielectric metasurfaces for nonlinear chiro-optical devices with high conversion efficiency.