Second harmonic generation in NLO polymers excited by surface plasmon enhanced electric field induced by femtosecond optical pulses

Abstract

We will report second harmonic generation (SHG) in nonlinear optical (NLO) polymers excited by surface plasmon enhanced optical fields. The surface plasmon (SP) polariton was excited in an attenuated total reflection geometry having the Kretchmann configuration. The NLO polymers, consisting of Disperse Red1 as guest chromophores and poly (methyl methacrylate) as host materials, were coated upon the Ag layers. Our experimental results indicated that the SHG signal intensity from the polymer coated Ag films was more than 10 times higher than that from the non-coated Ag films. The SHG autocorrelation traces excited by SP-enhanced fields were also studied and the correlation time was shorter than 150 fs, the temporal resolutions of the present spectrometer. © Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2013.