Ultrafast Terahertz Gating of the Polarization and Giant Nonlinear Optical Response in BiFeO3 Thin Films

Frank Chen; John Goodfellow; Shi Liu; Ilya Grinberg; Matthias C Hoffmann; Anoop R Damodaran; Yi Zhu; Peter Zalden; Xiaohang Zhang; Ichiro Takeuchi; Andrew M Rappe; Lane W Martin; Haidan Wen; Aaron M Lindenberg

doi:10.1002/adma.201502975

Ultrafast Terahertz Gating of the Polarization and Giant Nonlinear Optical Response in BiFeO3 Thin Films

Adv Mater. 2015 Nov 4;27(41):6371-5. doi: 10.1002/adma.201502975. Epub 2015 Sep 21.

Authors

Frank Chen^{1

2}, John Goodfellow^{1

3}, Shi Liu⁴, Ilya Grinberg⁴, Matthias C Hoffmann⁵, Anoop R Damodaran⁶, Yi Zhu⁷, Peter Zalden¹, Xiaohang Zhang⁸, Ichiro Takeuchi⁸, Andrew M Rappe⁴, Lane W Martin^{6

9}, Haidan Wen⁷, Aaron M Lindenberg^{1

3

10}

Affiliations

¹ SIMES Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA.
² Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
⁴ The Makineni Theoretical Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
⁵ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁷ Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, 60439, USA.
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
⁹ Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
¹⁰ PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA.

PMID: 26389651
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201502975

Abstract

Terahertz pulses are applied as an all-optical bias to ferroelectric thin-film BiFeO3 while monitoring the time-dependent ferroelectric polarization through its nonlinear optical response. Modulations in the intensity of the second harmonic light generated by the film correspond to on-off ratios of 220× gateable on femtosecond timescales. Polarization modulations comparable to the built-in static polarization are observed.

Keywords: ferroelectrics; nonlinear optical properties; terahertz modulators; ultra-fast.